Time for an update!

The following was posted via mobile phone.

Game: battle field bad company 2

I recently picked up this game because playing the demo was awesome fun with my friends.

The campaign is good, the idea that you unlock guns by picking them up is rather neat to me. The downside is some weapons look very similar to others with their icons, and others are almost impossible to find. But you don't actually NEED extra weapon types to play the game, it just expands the options.

The story of the campaign is interesting, starts off in WWII japan and then flashes to the future in Russia. I'm not done so I won't talk much more about the plot other then to say it's got a few surprises....

The multiplayer mode though quickly deviated from the demo. The maps are much much much much larger, so large that you can be sniping, in a game with 18 people and not see anyone for a minute or two.

The objective nature of the game types makes this alot of fun to play with friends, but make it really hard if you can't hop into a squad for various area spawns.

The weapon class balance is good, as are the spawns. You can spawn off of a team mate or puck a spawn area.

Musically the soundtrack is pretty good, it seems to fit the modes of the game well, visually nothing new but nothing old.

The on thing that bugs me is there isn't cooperative campaign, you can't look at your statistics unless connected to live and you need to verify your EA account every time you use your game...

I'd give it 7.5 stars of 10

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 :)