The following is a mobile post from my iPhone, as such the grammar my be poor and tags will be edited in later along with visual aides.

Game ramble: Prince of Persia (for the 360)

Prince of Persia is a pretty decent game, the controls aren't too complicated, and the bosses are difficult, in that to beat each you do different things, but all in all it's only an "ok" game.

The achievemnts are either way to hard to get, or way to easy. The controls can be to sensitive, causing you to jump ways that you don't want to, resulting in death. And the combo system; man that's way too complicated for four buttons, but how I want thee achievement.

The story line isn't bad, just not good either, you gotta stop big bad evil god from destroying the world, and to do it you have to go visit "fertile" land which imprissons the evil god... And as usual you do it by running around and slashing stuff...

The graphics are good, and the sound is okay.

Some of the inter charater dialouge should be tweaked, as it's repetitive, but all in all it's an ok game...

Incase it doesn't tag the author correctly this is Hawks.

Quakes in the Anime Industry

Now, this isn't exactly as bad as the Geneon collapse, but this has been one heck of a worrying week for the anime industry.

Tokyopop Loses All Kodansha Titles

"As of August 31st, Tokyopop no longer has rights to sell Kodansha manga in the U.S." -icv2.com

Meaning that Tokyopop will print no more of Kodansha-owned titles, and once the current stock is sold, there will be no more from Tokyopop.

Tokyopop's lost titles span over 60 series, and include:

• Chobits
• Love Hina
• Samurai Deeper Kyo
• Rave Master
• A.I. Love You
• FLCL

This is the result of Kodansha allowing its contracts with Tokyopop to expire. Kodansha has yet to issue a reason for its, erm, lack of action.

Dark Horse lost its licenses to the Akira and Ghost in the Shell mangas in a similar manner, however they have been given many of Tokyopop's lost Kodansha CLAMP titles including Chobits.

Kodansha's new super-best-friend, Random House aka Del Rey, has been given Samurai Deeper Kyo.

A more complete list of the lost titles and their new American publishers are here:
http://manga.about.com/b/2009/09/01/the-kodansha-tokyopop-split-which-manga-are-left-in-limbo.htm

However, it is notable Ken Akamatsu titles A.I. Love You and Love Hina have yet to be assigned a publisher.

Sources:
http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/15747.html
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-08-31/tokyopop-confirms-its-kodansha-manga-licenses-will-end

ADV Films Dismembered

"A.D. Vision, the parent company of ADV Films, has announced that it is shutting down after transferring its assets to several other companies that will continue its operations." -AnimeNewsNetwork

"SXION 23 (Section 23 Films) has all of ADV's former licenses and most of its staff, but not ADV's former owner John Ledford. SXION 23 will continue to distribute the current orders and future pre-orders that ADV used to fulfill, without changing their schedules." -AnimeNewsNetwork

AEsir Holdings now owns ADV Film's intellectual properties, so they may opt to continue using the ADV Films label on products they release with SXION 23.

Additionally:

"Valkyrie Media Partners has acquired 100% of ADV's Anime Network television unit, while Seraphim Studios has acquired ADV's Amusement Park Media production unit." -AnimeNewsNetwork

Source:
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-09-01/adv-films-shuts-down-transfers-assets-to-other-companies
http://icv2.com/articles/news/15752.html

LOL Piracy

This is from the anime Spice and Wolf. Thus far it has been in both of the most recent episodes.

Click on image to start.



Edit: Bugger, in making the previous, I've seen it so many times it doesn't look that bad to me :p
Here's a less animated one:

Endless Eight is OVER!!!

The following post is all about the recent horrors surrounding the sequel to The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi.

[To those of you who aren't oblivious to the anime industry, this first part will be review]

Kyoto Animation, the japanese animation studio that could do no wrong. Every television anime it produced were instantly massively successful and their fans were the most ravenous in the industry.

It was about time they cashed-in on those poor fools.

Among their greatest successes was the juggernaut that is "The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi". KyoAni teased their fans on and off with a new season of the title, and some three years later a new "season" did eventually arrive. However this new "season" was not what fans were bargaining for.

Have you ever seen the movie Groundhog Day? Yes you. Have you seen it? It is that movie from 1993 starring Bill Murray. In it he is stuck in a time-loop of sorts; he wakes up everyday to find the previous day has simply started-over. This is the basic premise of Suzumiya Haruhi season 2, except with the critical missing bit that when Kyon (Bill Murray's replacement) wakes up, he does not remember that his day (or week in this case) has started over. This has caused essentially the same episode to be reanimated and reaired 7 weeks in a row with only very minuscule random differences to differentiate the episodes. In fact, the episode count is something I am simply taking someone's word for because I can't tell which episode is which.

[/review end]


The top 5 things fans thought would happen:

5. It ends next week. It ends next week. It ends next week. It ends next week...
4. An entire season of Endless Eight
3. Yuki gets fed-up and kills everybody
2. The ark ends at nine episodes
1. Endless Eight remains unconcluded and is resumed at a later date
   

The 5 most interesting thoughts from the mouths of random fans:

5. Endless Eight is called Endless Eight because it takes place in August and a side-ways eight representing infinity, not because it is supposed to be eight episodes...
4. In the novels Endless Eight is ONE chapter or ~30 pages!
3. If these episodes still sell like hotcakes I am giving-up on humanity
2. Bandai, do NOT release these episodes like normal episodes. No one is buying an entirely Endless Eight disc or two... At least I hope not
1. Quoted from poster penguintruth on ANN:

1. The damage, as far as I'm concerned, is done.
   

The damage, as far as I'm concerned, is done.

They wasted this season with this nonesense, and dragged the name of this program through the mud with it. How can one even justify being a fan of the show after this crap? They've scuttled their own best title.

I know I'll probably end up watching whatever comes next out of interest in the other storylines of the books, but the show just feels a little dimmer now.

The nightmare may be over, but the melancholy of the fans of Suzumiya Haruhi will remain. Zing!

As usual, I believe Hitler says it best:


If you'd still like to watch the episode(s), may I suggest you save some time and watch them all at once XD
http://dic.nicovideo.jp/v/sm7686292

StarPirates

Starpirates.net, is a Browser Base RPG made by Snake Head games (found here: http://www.snakeheadgames.com/) Its a PVP game; with a strong community. (A number of our author's play this game). It's timeline is set in the future after the decline of humanity on earth, and is about survival fighting for what remaining raw materials are in the solar system.

Its a great real time based game; with great mechanics.

If your interested in giving it a try you can sign up Here.

Maybe some of the other authors that play will give there opinion of the game.

And yes Gir, I do need thous nouns.... ^w^

Mercenaires 2 for the 360

Hey everyone reading this though i would put this up here. So Mercs 2, as i like to call it, for the 360 is pretty fun and has a nice open world format to it. First you pick a merc, if u have not played the first one or heard of the the mercs games your chocies are limited to the following 3: Mui, Nilison, and Chris. Each one has a "special ability" consisting of faster running, faster health regen, and carring more ammo, though just to point out the guys carry more than mui but that's y i guess she can run faster. Anywho starting out you end up rescuing a formal general to the Venezuela army, he's done some crimes and was put in jail. This ends up being your first contract, and at the same time your training mission/tutorial, which is nice for people who haven't played the game before. Anyways after u rescue him the game goes to a cut seen and in all u end up getting a attempt on ur life. but manage to escape, but not before getting shot in the rear. And this is where the fun begins...

So it goes into another cut scence basically showing the guy u rescued and another guy who hired u to do the rescuing taking over venezuala and you pretty much want revenge for him not paying u and trying to kill u. Now you get to go take his house to use as your base of operations, and you learn a few more things in this mission, like how to hijack a tank. After this you end up having to get your heli pilot, mechcanic, and airplane pilot. These are required to advance the storyline, but in all u do want all of them. After this you get a little bit more freedom to roam around parts of the map. At the moment not all of it is avalible but plenty is open for you to drive around in. There are certain missions you have to do to advance the game of course but plenty of fun, one u get to demolish a oil dereck. All this leads up to bringing in the allies and chinese, which in turn opens up the rest of the map.

Now i bet your wondering who have you been doing missions for and such. Well some of them have been for yourself, but a majority has been for 2 or 3 of the factions. Now the reason i say 2 or 3 is because one is the pirates. Their missions are not required too much for the story. You really only have to do like 2 missions for them and then u can ignore them, but what fun is that. They do other several wonderful things u can buy from them. Now back to the other 2 factions ; the UP (Universal Petrolium) and the PLAV ( People's liberation army of Venezuala). The UP are pretty much an oil company that has hired mercs working for them. They offer some basic things that are ok to use, but in general arn't the best. The PLAV are kinda the same but offer a bit "higher quality" of things. Also forgot to mention the UP and PLAV hate each other and everyone hates the pirates. Along the same line the Allies and UP team up and the chinese and PLAV team up.

The allies and chinese have now entered the game and are a continuation in some ways from the first game, meaning they still wanna kill each other and don't really care too much what happens here. Now these 2 superpowers offer the best of things, but you do have to do a few things to gain access to those. China, in my opinion has the power things. They got the fuel air rpg's the artillery and the wonderful lotus assult chopper. The allies have some wonderful things too of course... (allies of course being the US really). Anywho they got the only heli with aa rockets on it, the ambassador gunship. Both of these factions have a nuclear bunker buster that u end up needing to get to solano, the guy that tried to kill you. You do about 3 missions for either the allies or chinese or both, more money that way, but u have to balance what you do and how you do it cuz their missions pretty much make it so that the other will hate you. You get the nuke and the game ends basically. In all the game is very fun but also easy at the same time.

Now one thing i would also like to point out about this game is that it's coop, but only online (insert sad face). Playing this game with a buddy makes it even easier and more fun. All the vehicles are made for 2 or more ppl. Something else different from the first is that there's swimming allowed, so no more just dying if u hit water, which is nice. Ok so i know this was probably a little hard to follow cuz i'm not really good at keeping on track, but at least i got something up :)

Ultra Marin Takes Flight

Okay, so I was playing through Zelda: Link's Awakening for the Gameboy Color, maybe about 3-4 dungeons in, and I read something online so crazy that I just had to see it myself. So I promptly erased my save file to do just that.

But first things first, meet Marin:

"This maiden from Mabe village saved your life when she found you washed up on the beach. Marin bears an uncanny resemblance to Princess Zelda. She is a very musical woman who loves singing and yearns for life off the island. She has many friends among humans, animals and even some among monsters." – Zelda: LA DX instruction manual

So, needless to say, if there is an attractive girl Link’s age in a Zelda game she is single and she likes Link. Marin is no exception; Link and Marin are super best friends. Here they are enjoying a view, and falling down a well...

...Naturally with Link underneath. Ah such is love.

Now on to the juicy bits.
Okay, so here you are one day, like normal, hacking at the chickens with your sword with Marin in tow. As usual, she objects (you can tell I took this picture myself :p):

But then suddenly on around the 40th cut, she says... Something unexpected:

Marin: Koholint’s darling or future serial killer?...

Ultra Marin awaaay!

Site Expansion

Today marks a revitalization of the G3 Rag.
We first expand our rambling area's to include Anime, Manga, and Music; and we welcome two new authors; Who can introduce themselves below.

Hey Ninja here, some of u may know me from SP as Dark Rogue, while others from killing zombies in Cod: WaW. However some may not know me at all, and that is what this is for. I enjoy video games, board games, and the occasional airsoft game. I love watching anime and reading manga now, though haven't read in awhile. I also love to draw charaters from the anime i watch. Currently I"m working on Madlax and Revy which both are proving to be a slight challenge. That about sums me up i guess and i feel like i've typed too much so this is Ninja signing off for now. :P

Hi, SirGir also here, resisting temptation to edit Ninja's post into horrible things. I am exhausted, famished, and short-on-time here so I'll be brief for now. I am all about manga, anime, techno, and since my last college finals, I've been back into video games. I promise to not be verbose, to use bullet points, and to use plenty of pretty pictures.

Call of Duty: World at War

Though Call of Duty: World at War has been out for a while; I felt the need to blog about it. Or more specifically about it's expansions. As of right now 3 map sets have been released.

The first (technically a bonus map set) is the Makin Day map. It's like the original makin map; though its day time, the tide is out and there are a few areas that you can walk now that the 'village' is awake and active. Though there isn't much new here; its free, so whats not to like?

The second Map pack (labeled Map Pack 1 on XBL selling at 800 microsoft points) contains the maps Nightfire; Station and Knee Deep, as well as the new zombie Expansion 'Verrückt'. The online live versus maps are nice; though when you first play them they are hard to learn; the maps are not symmetrical, but its a good set of areas to use different weapon types. Verrückt is what originally brought me to this map pack; and it does not dissapoint, though much harder then the original zombies (starting split up if your group size is large then 2, and the moving weapons box) there are several nice new additions to the game. First off would be the perk cola. The perk cola allows you to get one of four different perks to use. Speed reloading(and rebuilding and running), Juggernaut, Quick Revive, and double tap. Another nice new addition is the barriers; that can grant you a temporary reprieve from the hordes of the undead.

The second Map pack (labeled Map Pack 2 on XBL also at 800 microsoft points) contains Sub Pens, Corrosion, and Banzai. The maps add a new set of territory to play in and they certainly are different from the originals by adding a new depth of realism to playing; mainly background noises like waterfalls. Other then that its more of the same.

What really brought me to the '2nd' Map pack was yet another new Zombie map. Shi no Numa. Shi no Numa is different then all the other maps because you can go outside. Yes. Out of your fortified building. It may sound crazy; but the temptation of the 4 perks(the same as the last set) that are each randomly assigned a building is strong; Mainly because you can have all of them at once; and let me tell you; when you've got that you are a super man slaughtering zombies. Though the spitefully evil teddy bear remains in the box lurking; now when it moves it glows so its easier to find out where it is. There is also a new weapon; the Wunderwaffle. This rifle, a cousin or the ray gun, is some non standard gear aimed at taking down large numbers of zombies very very fast. Though it only has 18 shots one properly aimed shot will kill 10 zombies.

Oh and there are achievements for the zombie map pack. So you can brag about how awesome you really are at killing them.

Shi no Numa was so popular over 1,000,000 purchases occurred in the first 4 days of its release.

--------------------------
Call of Duty: World at War is a very good game; its expansions make it even better if you can afford the DLC. If you don't have it; get it.

DJ Max Fever

This little music-simulation PSP game is kind of obscure, but it's packed with quite a lot of good stuff. When you turn on the game, the menu looks very nice with the techno music in the background. Because this was originally a Korean game, most of the songs are in Korean. Didn't think I liked K-pop, but what do you know. There are quite a few very addictive songs that I liked instantly.

Because I can pass level 5 songs in Beatmania games, DJ Max Fever is a bit too easy. There are 4 keys, 5 keys, or 6 keys, and I passed a 6 key Level 8 song no problem during my first plays. It's either that I'm good or the game is not challenging enough :P

Anyway, there is one interesting concept. It's the same with Beatmania in that you are supposed to hit corrosponding keys when it gets to a red line near the bottom, but in DJMF it doesn't necessarily has to be the right key. As long as you hit a key at the right time, the combo continues, but you only get a fraction of the score for that note.

The visuals in the background are very nice, too bad because unless you are watching someone else play, you probably are too busy to watch those. Heh.

Overall very nice game, well worth the money.

X-men Origins Wolverine: Uncaged Edition

So, while the usual movie-to-game area of games are usually bad, X-men Origins Wolverine: Uncaged edition is pretty darn awesome. Its not the movie; which is a good thing, I've got nothing against the movie, it was pretty with its explosions, but the coreography was lame.... But for a single player game, Wolverine manages to avoid the repetition of only pressing the same button over and over.

Its just too darn fun to rip people apart. The achievements for doing so are fun to get, but just challenge enough to be worth trying, yet not too easy. The plot is a bit straight forward through, but its something you can easily end up wasting time on, because how can you imagine ripping people apart to be too linear?

While its fun, over all its an okay game. The graphics are good, but the soundtrack leaves something to be desired. Yeah the music comes on when you fight and such, but the sound effects and music don't make you pause and go wow. The controls are smooth and easy to use; but the slowing down of time (not optional) when you kill the last baddie in an area gets repetetive.

All in all, this a good game to waste time on if your by yourself, but with out the option of multiplayer, no replay value (aside from the hard difficulty locked at the beginning) its really only good for one go through (with a slight pause to get the gamer score from achievments), So this falls into the rent it or borrow it category, not the buy section.

Props to the local madison RavenSoftware for making this though, superb work for being handed crap when the previous group ran out of budget. Good choice there Activision....

Combat Arms

Combat arms, by Nexon found at http://combatarms.nexon.net/Intro.aspx , is a free FPS shooter; that has both a competitive mode (a la modes like elimination, capture the flag, Search and destroy and one-man army) and cooperative modes (Fireteam/Scenario mode). Its not the best graphics, and the music is a bit loud; but its free. FREE.

It can take a while to download, but the game mechanics are pretty good, there are standard guns everyone has access to, and guns you 'buy' using in game earned points for a time period. The more kills you get in a round the more points you get to buy guns. The better you are, the better your weapons, the better your kills.

Its a great way to waste time with friends, its free, and will run on almost any recent PC (and some macs running PC windows.).

Then again I've only wasted 5 hours in the last 2 days after full days at work.... So its fairly good.

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne

I was playing Final Fantasy XII earlier today and I thought maybe I should play something else because there's only so much of the MMORPG-styled game I can take. So after some digging around in my games pile, I decided to play SMT Nocturne again.

Apparently I left it off after about 10 hours of gameplay, because I encountered a boss that was really hard to beat. After a bit of level-grinding and a few new demon fusions (awesome system btw, just like in the Persona series) I beat him on my first try.

The story is basically about a Japanese high school boy, who was visiting his teacher in the hospital, but due to some mysterious incidents, was turned into a half-demon. Now he has to fight his way to save the world. Or something like that. The whole thing so far is kind of vague, or it's possible that I simply forgot.

So, about the actual gameplay. For those who have never played it or the SMT Digital Devil Saga series, the whole game is basically 95% dungeon-crawling. Whatever time you are not spending in dungeons, you are on the world (not so vast though, more like overall area) map. There are only few rare places in the game without any random encounters, the rest of the places are crawling with monsters. And the encounter rate is really high.

The battle is turn-based, but winning usually requires strategy, and that's what makes this game so challenging and fun. Elemental weaknesses, critical hits, missing the target all contribute to how many actions you get per turn. Sometimes you find yourself making hit after hit, while other times you are unlucky enough to miss a few hits, in which case your turn is over before you know it.

Now for the overall presentation. Nocturne is rated M, and it shows through the monster designs and certain themes. Overall, the colors used in the game are rather bleak, and it really affects the player's mood after a while. Because you are all alone all the time save the demons that you recruit, it really feels lonely and desolate.

That's an image of a typical dungeon. As you can see, the atmosphere is rather desolate. The sound and the unique character design of SMT games all make the game creepy in its own way.

Nocturne has its difficult moments (rather frequently) but it's quite a fun game. Rather rare now, but very well liked among hardcore RPG gamers.

Halo 3: ODST

Halo 3: ODST (previously Halo 3 : Recon), is slated for release this fall, as an FPS gamer; and as a huge Halo fan (if you haven't yet, and you have time take a look at the book series) I'm really excited to play ODST.

Orbital Drop Shock Troopers is different from the other games in the Halo sandbox that is their universe, as your not playing as the famous 117, Master Chief. The main playable character, 'The Rookie', is human; pure, un-genetically modified, 100% pure human. This means No super speed and strength, no Spartan armor, and a biggie, no dual wielding.

But that does not make the ODST members weak by any means; They get the best and the brightest shiney new gear to kick butt with. Stealth and finesse take the place of the cavalry charge style of Spartan combat. With the new and returned weaponry (the suppressed SMG, and the M6D (a vairant of the original Halo:Combat Evolved pistol)) its still an open game.

The controls of the released footage and demo's look insane. The Open world segments of New Mombosa, offer a lot of game play options, and I am pleased to say it will look great in 1080p Hi Def.

As usual Bungie will be bringing back their Cooperative play for campaign (still 1-4 players) and there will be maps that have content for the original HALO 3 game.

All in all, this fall looks to be another very good Halo year.

Beatmania IIDX 17 Sirius

Ok, the first game I'm going to mention is the newest one in the popular DJ simulation game series (well, mostly in Japan, here not so much) Beatmania IIDX 17 Sirius. They are currently location testing the arcade game in Japan, so any releases will be far into the future. After all, they have yet to release IIDX 16 Empress on the home console.
Always nice to listen to some nice techno/trance and whatnot.

-Cookie

RAG(ed) Begginings...

Test?

----------------
Edit, Hawks here (aka Guy Gamer of the title);
This was sent from my phone; just to see if I can keep up with Girl Gamer as she will likely post a lot at her work place.

So, this marks the beginning of G3 Rag. G3 Rag (Guy and Girl Gamers Rambling about Games), is a blog about games and electronics. Right now there are two authors;


Guy Gamer aka Hawks.
Hawks is a College student, and loves to play video games; His console of choice is the XBox 360, and he prefers to play FPS, Action, RTS, and occasionally RPG games. When not gaming he freeruns and works.


Girl Gamer aka Um...the cookie that you throw away after it's all charred black? (Well, Cookie is fine I guess)

Also a college student, specifically a Computer Science major, who is hoping to someday do programming for video game companies. Yep. Very ambitious. Hoping to buy a PS3 some time in the future, but currently is occupied by her 2 PS2's (one NTSC one JP). Mostly plays RPGs, strategy, and music simulation. But one never knows.


Together we're gonna write G3 Rag. Here's to Gaming.