Well tomorrow will officially be the end of the first month of my blog, and I have to say, I'm quite happy with how it's going.
In my first month I've managed to get over 900 views (no over 9000 jokes today, sorry) and AdSense is working quite well too. I've also just been approved as an Amazon Affiliate, just to try it out and see if it's a service worth dedicating time to.
I managed to finish watching Bamboo Blade today, since the final six or so episodes are the best part of the story, and seeing Tamaki do throat strikes screaming 'TSUKI~!' doesn't get old. I much preferred the Japanese dub to the English dub I watched back in 2011 and I'm wondering if this will be a consistent factor as I replace my other English dubbed anime. I'm sure that once my other reviews are all done and I've caught up, I'll review Bamboo Blade as well.
Reviews are actually becoming much harder to publish, heck, even these posts are. My laptop is on the verge of dying and I think the LCD Screen will be kicking the bucket within the next week or so, now that the infamous 'green lines' have appeared all over. Sadly, the difficulty isn't just my laptop dying. It's a mixture of that and the fact that I'm not very comfortable typing for extended periods of time on a laptop, and I don't have a desk/office chair to sit at currently, so it gets worse. This should all change in the future when my new system is built and I can dedicate much more time to my blog and my upcoming website.
I've watched three movies today, since I'm not much in the mood for video games at the moment. I started off by watching Sunshine Cleaning, which is about two sisters who start a business doing bio hazard and postmortem clean ups for the good cash it rewards. It was kind of funny, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Secondly was The Squid and the Whale, a movie featuring Jesse Eisenberg playing a sixteen year-old boy with a twelve year-old brother obsessed with drinking and masturbating... Like a lot of twelve year-old boys in the UK these days actually. It had an interesting storyline, but the ending was bollocks. The movie could have been much longer than 80 minutes.
The movie I just finished watching was Badges of Glory, an action-comedy film based in Hong Kong. I only wanted to watch it originally because I'm a huge Jet Li fan, but it's one of the funniest movies I've watched for a long time. The comedic fight scenes and amusing situations made me laugh all the way through, plus there were some awesome fight scenes featuring Jet Li, so it was win-win. Honestly, if you can find a copy, watch it!
Tomorrow I intend on getting started with Cowboy Bebop and Far Cry 3. I'll post a daily update from my iPad if my laptop dies, which seems likely.
Take care and urge my laptop to stay alive, please?
Links:
Bamboo Blade - My Anime List
Sunshine Cleaning - IMDb
The Squid and the Whale - IMDb
Badges of Fury - IMDb
Profiles:
Facebook
Twitter
PSN Profiles
Sunday, 29 September 2013
Saturday, 28 September 2013
28/09/2013 - Bamboo Blade, AMD R9 Series GPUs and Cookie Clicker
It's been another one of those days. I was actually looking forward to playing Far Cry 3, but it's still downloading right now. The file size is approximately 6.5gb, but my connection seems to suck more than usual today, so it has yet to finish... Sigh.
The good news is that I got to watch a few more episodes of Bamboo Blade and I'm now up to episode 21! Rin Suzuki has just been introduced as a rival/friend of Tamaki and the Kanto tournament is coming up, so we get to see Tamaki lose, at last.
I'm not trying to bring her down or anything, but the one part of her character design is that she's kind of smug. The aura she gives off is meant to display her modesty and make the fans fall in love with her, but it actually gives off an air of arrogance in my opinion. It's refreshing to have an almost entirely female lineup, but the author is responsible for another series in which a female character 'stole the show'. Maybe some variation is needed.
Next on a topic focusing more on the real world (you know, the scary place with uber-high resolution graphics). The new AMD R9 series have been premiered at the GPU 14 event.
GPU14 was hosted in Hawaii meant as a play on words of the new GPU architecture that AMD is using, also known as Hawaii. The cards have boasted some pretty significant benchmark figures and are meant to be capable of taking the crown from nVidia's almighty GTX Titan. To be honest, if they can provide even close to the performance of a GTX Titan for the price they're saying, they will sell out in minutes anyway.
I only have two concerns really, one is whether they will fix the god-awful CrossFireX scaling that the 7xxx series suffers with and two is whether AMD will get distracted from the task at end with their new approach on 'gaming audio'.
In normal circumstances, the release of a new generation of cards would be a whole new ball game when it came to CrossFireX and SLI compatibility, but the majority of the cards that AMD is releasing (with exception to the new audio capable cards) are just remodelled 7xxx series cards. This pisses me off because it's just cryptic marketing, especially when they never managed to fix the issues with the previous generation.
Sure, AMD got the 7970 performance from rivalling a GTX 660ti to being able to compete with a GTX 770, but if you run more than one card (and a lot of hardcore gamers do), you're suffering due to lack of effort from the card developers.
If I consider buying an R9 series card, I'll wait until the aftermarket models are released, since buying from the first batch is asking for problems and AMD's stock coolers always run on the toasty side. Lastly for this post, the new king in the 'bane of my social life' category, Cookie Clicker...
I actually have my girlfriend to blame for this one, since I caught her playing it after teaching one of her students. The game has no meaning, no end goal and no actual game play. I'd actually say it holds a trophy of it's own for having less game play than most of these shockingly-bad Facebook games.
All you do, is click the big Cookie... I bet you couldn't have guessed that, right? Once you have enough money, you buy properties that automatically make cookies. Not just normal buildings like factories or farms, but time machines and antimatter converters. There are achievements and upgrades you can buy, but mostly it's a giant waste of time.
That said, most people enjoy wasting their time on the Internet these days, so why not give it a try?
Turns out I missed the entire 'Online' section of my Demon's Souls review so I'm in the process of writing it now.
PS: My Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD STILL ISN'T HERE! ARGH~!
Links:
AMD R9 Official Release
LinusTechTips Video - GPU14 Footage and R9 Hands On
Cookie Clicker
With regards to Cookie Clicker: Open at your own risk. Your partner will leave you, your children and pets will die of neglect, and all you'll care about will be clicking that big... useless cookie. Anyways, back to clicking my cookie!
Profiles:
Facebook
Twitter
PSN Profiles
The good news is that I got to watch a few more episodes of Bamboo Blade and I'm now up to episode 21! Rin Suzuki has just been introduced as a rival/friend of Tamaki and the Kanto tournament is coming up, so we get to see Tamaki lose, at last.
I'm not trying to bring her down or anything, but the one part of her character design is that she's kind of smug. The aura she gives off is meant to display her modesty and make the fans fall in love with her, but it actually gives off an air of arrogance in my opinion. It's refreshing to have an almost entirely female lineup, but the author is responsible for another series in which a female character 'stole the show'. Maybe some variation is needed.
Next on a topic focusing more on the real world (you know, the scary place with uber-high resolution graphics). The new AMD R9 series have been premiered at the GPU 14 event.
GPU14 was hosted in Hawaii meant as a play on words of the new GPU architecture that AMD is using, also known as Hawaii. The cards have boasted some pretty significant benchmark figures and are meant to be capable of taking the crown from nVidia's almighty GTX Titan. To be honest, if they can provide even close to the performance of a GTX Titan for the price they're saying, they will sell out in minutes anyway.
I only have two concerns really, one is whether they will fix the god-awful CrossFireX scaling that the 7xxx series suffers with and two is whether AMD will get distracted from the task at end with their new approach on 'gaming audio'.
In normal circumstances, the release of a new generation of cards would be a whole new ball game when it came to CrossFireX and SLI compatibility, but the majority of the cards that AMD is releasing (with exception to the new audio capable cards) are just remodelled 7xxx series cards. This pisses me off because it's just cryptic marketing, especially when they never managed to fix the issues with the previous generation.
Sure, AMD got the 7970 performance from rivalling a GTX 660ti to being able to compete with a GTX 770, but if you run more than one card (and a lot of hardcore gamers do), you're suffering due to lack of effort from the card developers.
If I consider buying an R9 series card, I'll wait until the aftermarket models are released, since buying from the first batch is asking for problems and AMD's stock coolers always run on the toasty side. Lastly for this post, the new king in the 'bane of my social life' category, Cookie Clicker...
I actually have my girlfriend to blame for this one, since I caught her playing it after teaching one of her students. The game has no meaning, no end goal and no actual game play. I'd actually say it holds a trophy of it's own for having less game play than most of these shockingly-bad Facebook games.
All you do, is click the big Cookie... I bet you couldn't have guessed that, right? Once you have enough money, you buy properties that automatically make cookies. Not just normal buildings like factories or farms, but time machines and antimatter converters. There are achievements and upgrades you can buy, but mostly it's a giant waste of time.
 |
| Cookie Clicker - In a few hours this will be you. It's inevitable, don't fight it. |
That said, most people enjoy wasting their time on the Internet these days, so why not give it a try?
Turns out I missed the entire 'Online' section of my Demon's Souls review so I'm in the process of writing it now.
PS: My Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD STILL ISN'T HERE! ARGH~!
Links:
AMD R9 Official Release
LinusTechTips Video - GPU14 Footage and R9 Hands On
Cookie Clicker
With regards to Cookie Clicker: Open at your own risk. Your partner will leave you, your children and pets will die of neglect, and all you'll care about will be clicking that big... useless cookie. Anyways, back to clicking my cookie!
Profiles:
PSN Profiles
Friday, 27 September 2013
27/09/2013 - God of War III Platinum, Ghost of Sparta Platinum and Bamboo Blade
Today has been a day of much swearing... After facerolling my way through the entirety of Titan mode, I got a nasty wake up call at the Three Judges in the infamous flaming cerberus + 3 satyr fight... Oh boy, that one hurt.
The first stage of the fight is pretty easy, considering all you day is spam-fire your Bow of Apollo and kick the dogs the cerberus vomits out back at his face. The latter part is really fun, in a sadistic kind of way.
The second phase is also pretty easy, though some how the cerberus still manages to spit three fireballs from only two heads, go figure. The satyr can be a pain, but the 'Claws of Hades' and there 'Gorgon Soul' ability turn him to stone and make him easy prey. The last phase is when *&@# goes down...
You have to fight the now one-headed cerberus and two satyrs at once. The cerberus doesn't do anything different except spam more fireballs, but the satyrs make the bow+dog kicking strategy redundant and unless you're incredibly lucky or have a godlike aim, you can only hit one satyr with the stone gaze. I died here more times than I can count, until on my successful attempt I went into a Kratos-like rage and went apeshit on the cerberus with Rage of Sparta.
I thought it was smooth sailing after that, but Zeus can kill you in one combo on Titan mode, so that peed on my fireworks a little. Sigh... Anyway, here's the platinum! Oh, and the delayed one from Ghost of Sparta.
I kind of wish I had God of War: Ascension here as well, but after playing five of them in a row, I think it might be time to take a break! Besides, I have Kingdom Hearts (soon, grrrrr) and Skyrim to play.
I really wish Kingdom Hearts would arrive, the postal service here is bollocks, it almost makes me regret my past insults of Royal Mail... Almost. On the topic of Kingdom Hearts, I believe the following picture summarises my anger, behold the pr0 meme generator skills!
I managed to watch a few episodes of Bamboo Blade today, seeing Tamaki do a throat strike is epic, they make it look so brutal. Although, I imagine having a shinai jammed in to your throat is probably brutal enough without additional glorification.
Up to episode 19 and the motivation to watch is returning, mainly because I want to start Cowboy Bebop, but shh!
Well, that's all for today. Demon's Souls review is actually finished, but I don't want to spam post so I'll release it early tomorrow.
Profiles:
Facebook
Twitter
PSN Profiles
The first stage of the fight is pretty easy, considering all you day is spam-fire your Bow of Apollo and kick the dogs the cerberus vomits out back at his face. The latter part is really fun, in a sadistic kind of way.
The second phase is also pretty easy, though some how the cerberus still manages to spit three fireballs from only two heads, go figure. The satyr can be a pain, but the 'Claws of Hades' and there 'Gorgon Soul' ability turn him to stone and make him easy prey. The last phase is when *&@# goes down...
You have to fight the now one-headed cerberus and two satyrs at once. The cerberus doesn't do anything different except spam more fireballs, but the satyrs make the bow+dog kicking strategy redundant and unless you're incredibly lucky or have a godlike aim, you can only hit one satyr with the stone gaze. I died here more times than I can count, until on my successful attempt I went into a Kratos-like rage and went apeshit on the cerberus with Rage of Sparta.
I thought it was smooth sailing after that, but Zeus can kill you in one combo on Titan mode, so that peed on my fireworks a little. Sigh... Anyway, here's the platinum! Oh, and the delayed one from Ghost of Sparta.
 |
| God of War III - Platinum Trophy - Probably the second hardest after GoW I |
 |
| God of War: Ghost of Sparta - Platinum Trophy - One of the easier ones to be honest. |
I really wish Kingdom Hearts would arrive, the postal service here is bollocks, it almost makes me regret my past insults of Royal Mail... Almost. On the topic of Kingdom Hearts, I believe the following picture summarises my anger, behold the pr0 meme generator skills!
 | |
| Seriously, y u no? |
Up to episode 19 and the motivation to watch is returning, mainly because I want to start Cowboy Bebop, but shh!
Well, that's all for today. Demon's Souls review is actually finished, but I don't want to spam post so I'll release it early tomorrow.
Profiles:
PSN Profiles
Thursday, 26 September 2013
26/09/2013 - God of War III, Ghost of Sparta and Far Cry 3
I know, I know, I've been slacking off on these updates recently, but in all honesty I haven't actually done anything worth writing about for the past few days. Now I'm playing God of War III and Far Cry 3 (yay free PlayStation Plus goodies)!
Anyways, God of War: Ghost of Sparta is now platinumed, I remember mentioning that I enjoyed the final boss, but not much else. The combat is the same as every other God of War and there aren't many bosses. Even the bosses that are present are nothing notable, easy to defeat even on Hard mode and the generous checkpoint system wouldn't make them difficult fights even if they were a bit more tactical.
God of War III has been the most enjoyable one so far, the Challenges of Olympus were a bit easy compared to the earlier titles, but I'd rather not have to go through Challenge of the Gods 10 on God of War ever again. I'm currently on my Titan difficulty playthrough and I've just reached the Hermes encounter, so it shouldn't take me long to finish it.
I'm still waiting for my copy of Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD, it was due to arrive on the 25th, but my Skyrim copy was 10 days late so I'm not surprised at all. It does kind of suck though, I really want to play it!
I've watched a few movies over the last few days: City Island, It's Kind of a Funny Story and Lars and the real Girl, none of which warrant talking about much. City Island was funny, but kind of predictable. It's Kind of a Funny Story was hard to watch because the main character is a clone of my best friend from high school and I have no idea how Lars and the Real Girl is labelled as a comedy when the entire feature focus is Lars' mental illness... If the whole basis for the genre is the sex doll, then the movie obviously didn't have much else to go on.
I'm trying to work my way through Kara no Kyoukai as well, but the movies are pretty weird so I only watch them like once a week. I'm still on episode 16 of Bamboo Blade, so not much progress unfortunately.
The Demon's Souls platinum review is nearly finished, so I'll be sure to post that tomorrow during the day as well as a daily update.
I hope you enjoyed the update and I'll speak to you again soon!
Profiles:
Facebook
Twitter
PSN Profiles
Anyways, God of War: Ghost of Sparta is now platinumed, I remember mentioning that I enjoyed the final boss, but not much else. The combat is the same as every other God of War and there aren't many bosses. Even the bosses that are present are nothing notable, easy to defeat even on Hard mode and the generous checkpoint system wouldn't make them difficult fights even if they were a bit more tactical.
God of War III has been the most enjoyable one so far, the Challenges of Olympus were a bit easy compared to the earlier titles, but I'd rather not have to go through Challenge of the Gods 10 on God of War ever again. I'm currently on my Titan difficulty playthrough and I've just reached the Hermes encounter, so it shouldn't take me long to finish it.
I'm still waiting for my copy of Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD, it was due to arrive on the 25th, but my Skyrim copy was 10 days late so I'm not surprised at all. It does kind of suck though, I really want to play it!
I've watched a few movies over the last few days: City Island, It's Kind of a Funny Story and Lars and the real Girl, none of which warrant talking about much. City Island was funny, but kind of predictable. It's Kind of a Funny Story was hard to watch because the main character is a clone of my best friend from high school and I have no idea how Lars and the Real Girl is labelled as a comedy when the entire feature focus is Lars' mental illness... If the whole basis for the genre is the sex doll, then the movie obviously didn't have much else to go on.
I'm trying to work my way through Kara no Kyoukai as well, but the movies are pretty weird so I only watch them like once a week. I'm still on episode 16 of Bamboo Blade, so not much progress unfortunately.
The Demon's Souls platinum review is nearly finished, so I'll be sure to post that tomorrow during the day as well as a daily update.
I hope you enjoyed the update and I'll speak to you again soon!
Profiles:
PSN Profiles
Monday, 23 September 2013
Weekend Update - God of War: Ghost of Sparta, God of War III, Bamboo Blade and The Wolf Children: Ame and Yuki
Well that's quite a long title...
I decided to do a weekend update instead of two daily updates since it would have been much of the same. I managed to finish God of War: Ghost of Sparta in just over one day and I've now moved on to God of War III.
I definitely found Ghost of Sparta more enjoyable than Chains of Olympus, although the Keres' Wraiths are the most annoying creatures in any of the GoW games. The only way to counter them on Hard and Very Hard difficulties is to spam the parry button and counterattack, if you get caught by their ranged attack they just chain attack you to death and it's infuriating.
The final boss is a fun fight, if not a bit easy and the plot of the game isn't as boring as chasing after Helios. The only really enjoyable part of Chains of Olympus is the QTE with Atlas, the rest of it is pretty mundane.
I had a bit of a fanboy moment when I heard Helios speak and found out it was Crispin Freeman, probably my favourite English voice actor, along with Laura Bailey. I really enjoyed him playing Kyon in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya as well as Alucard in Hellsing, but I haven't heard him since Diablo III, due to converting to Japanese dub.
I'll aim to platinum God of War III this week in preparation for Kingdom Hearts, but there's no promises on that as I have some other stuff to do - stay tuned for the 'other stuff''.
I've also continued watching Bamboo Blade, and it's making me want to try Kendo... again. I attempted it once, but after trying to contact the club via phone, email and postal mail and receiving no reply, I gave up. It turns out that Iloilo has quite an active Kendo club though, so I might ask them if I can come and observe a class.
Bamboo Blade is pretty good and it's introducing even more characters, I'm looking forward to the moment when Tamaki loses her match, because it was very well done in the manga. I really want to get started with Cowboy Bebop and I'm fairly certain that my girlfriend wants to watch the Haruhi Suzumiya series... I guess I better hurry up.
Now I'm off to go and watch the rest of The Wolf Children, so far it's really good. We'll see if it makes me weep like One Piece did. I hope not.
I decided to do a weekend update instead of two daily updates since it would have been much of the same. I managed to finish God of War: Ghost of Sparta in just over one day and I've now moved on to God of War III.
I definitely found Ghost of Sparta more enjoyable than Chains of Olympus, although the Keres' Wraiths are the most annoying creatures in any of the GoW games. The only way to counter them on Hard and Very Hard difficulties is to spam the parry button and counterattack, if you get caught by their ranged attack they just chain attack you to death and it's infuriating.
The final boss is a fun fight, if not a bit easy and the plot of the game isn't as boring as chasing after Helios. The only really enjoyable part of Chains of Olympus is the QTE with Atlas, the rest of it is pretty mundane.
I had a bit of a fanboy moment when I heard Helios speak and found out it was Crispin Freeman, probably my favourite English voice actor, along with Laura Bailey. I really enjoyed him playing Kyon in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya as well as Alucard in Hellsing, but I haven't heard him since Diablo III, due to converting to Japanese dub.
I'll aim to platinum God of War III this week in preparation for Kingdom Hearts, but there's no promises on that as I have some other stuff to do - stay tuned for the 'other stuff''.
I've also continued watching Bamboo Blade, and it's making me want to try Kendo... again. I attempted it once, but after trying to contact the club via phone, email and postal mail and receiving no reply, I gave up. It turns out that Iloilo has quite an active Kendo club though, so I might ask them if I can come and observe a class.
Bamboo Blade is pretty good and it's introducing even more characters, I'm looking forward to the moment when Tamaki loses her match, because it was very well done in the manga. I really want to get started with Cowboy Bebop and I'm fairly certain that my girlfriend wants to watch the Haruhi Suzumiya series... I guess I better hurry up.
Now I'm off to go and watch the rest of The Wolf Children, so far it's really good. We'll see if it makes me weep like One Piece did. I hope not.
Saturday, 21 September 2013
20/09/2013 - Demon's Souls Platinum and God of War: Ghost of Sparta
Yeah... I finally did it. After two-and-a-half hours of farming, I got the Pure Bladestone from the Dual-Katana Black Skeleton with Pure Black World Tendency from 4-2. That was such a boring grind it's insane. It's not quite up there with my Insane in the Membrane achievement in WoW or the battle trophies in Star Ocean IV, but it's still stupid.
Honestly, the developer that thought it was a good idea to make every ore easily obtainable from Crystal Lizards or looting and then make one ore that's a bitch to get needs slapping. I think if I play Dark Souls, I might wait a while. Whining aside, I enjoyed getting the platinum for Demon's Souls, except that last farm. Here's a pic of the trophy and my character (stupid sunlight, who put that there?)
I was planning to watch a lot of Bamboo Blade today, but I felt like gaming a bit more so I only watched one episode. I started playing God of War: Ghost of Sparta, the fourth one I've played from my collection. I enjoyed it more than Chains of Olympus, but less than one and two. The Challenges of the Gods are a lot easier than the other games, but still make you think.
I've nearly got the platinum in Ghost of Sparta as well, I just need to finish the game on Spartan mode and that will be it. Maybe my quickest platinum ever, who knows.
My copy of Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD should be here next week, I ordered the limited edition hardback walkthrough as well, but apparently the publication date isn't until October 13th (??). Might have made more sense to release it with the game, but there must be a valid reason.
Well, I'm off to bed. My girlfriend wants to play games tomorrow, so I might not get to finish God of War, but I guess a day off is a good thing every now and then.
 |
| Pure Bladestone at last... That's right, I got you. #@*%ing thing. |
 |
| Demon's Souls Platinum and a mugshot of Nireth. Cheese? |
I've nearly got the platinum in Ghost of Sparta as well, I just need to finish the game on Spartan mode and that will be it. Maybe my quickest platinum ever, who knows.
My copy of Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD should be here next week, I ordered the limited edition hardback walkthrough as well, but apparently the publication date isn't until October 13th (??). Might have made more sense to release it with the game, but there must be a valid reason.
Well, I'm off to bed. My girlfriend wants to play games tomorrow, so I might not get to finish God of War, but I guess a day off is a good thing every now and then.
Thursday, 19 September 2013
18/09/2013 - Demon's Souls and Summer Wars
So there's been a day gap in my daily updates (technically two if you include this late post). Lame excuse time, commence! I ended up watching Summer Wars with my girlfriend until about 1am and then I was so tired that I fell asleep almost instantly, my bad.
But, on to the update!
I've almost completely finished Demon's Souls now. All I have left to do is farm a piece of Pure Bladestone and kill King Allant to craft the Northern Regalia sword. The drop rate on this Pure Bladestone is absolutely ridiculous though. I'm currently using the secret passage in 4-2 to farm the dual-katana skeleton and after 50 or so kills, it still hasn't dropped.
I might have to use my other character to farm the Pure anyway, since I dropped my controller yesterday and took a large chunk of flesh from Stockpile Thomas' head... Oops.
Honestly, I've had my fun time with this game and now it's just becoming tedious, grinding is very rarely fun, but in MMOs I can generally tolerate it. Ah well, I guess I better get back to grinding.
Now, about Summer Wars. I didn't actually plan to watch it for a while, but one of my girlfriends students told her that she should watch it, so we did. What an awesome movie. I haven't actually watched many anime movies outside of series and Ghibli, apart from the obvious ones like Akira, but after Summer Wars I think that will change. The concept for the movie is completely unique and manages to utilise the internet without going down the road of .hack and Sword Art Online. I would write a complete review of it but I might have to watch it again to make it worth reading.
Only a few more days until the penultimate episode of Shingeki no Kyojin, I can't wait! Hopefully [gg] subs will be on time, but that's something I won't hold my breath for.
Back to normal update schedule as of today, with the review of Demon's Souls hopefully arriving at the beginning of next week.
But, on to the update!
I've almost completely finished Demon's Souls now. All I have left to do is farm a piece of Pure Bladestone and kill King Allant to craft the Northern Regalia sword. The drop rate on this Pure Bladestone is absolutely ridiculous though. I'm currently using the secret passage in 4-2 to farm the dual-katana skeleton and after 50 or so kills, it still hasn't dropped.
I might have to use my other character to farm the Pure anyway, since I dropped my controller yesterday and took a large chunk of flesh from Stockpile Thomas' head... Oops.
Honestly, I've had my fun time with this game and now it's just becoming tedious, grinding is very rarely fun, but in MMOs I can generally tolerate it. Ah well, I guess I better get back to grinding.
Now, about Summer Wars. I didn't actually plan to watch it for a while, but one of my girlfriends students told her that she should watch it, so we did. What an awesome movie. I haven't actually watched many anime movies outside of series and Ghibli, apart from the obvious ones like Akira, but after Summer Wars I think that will change. The concept for the movie is completely unique and manages to utilise the internet without going down the road of .hack and Sword Art Online. I would write a complete review of it but I might have to watch it again to make it worth reading.
Only a few more days until the penultimate episode of Shingeki no Kyojin, I can't wait! Hopefully [gg] subs will be on time, but that's something I won't hold my breath for.
Back to normal update schedule as of today, with the review of Demon's Souls hopefully arriving at the beginning of next week.
Monday, 16 September 2013
16/09/2013 - Bamboo Blade & PC Update
Another slow, rainy day... Sigh. Ah well, I'd rather it was raining than so hot my skin falls off. I spent most of the day watching Bamboo Blade and I'm now up to episode eleven of twenty-six. I'm still finding it very enjoyable and I'm glad that we're starting to see some development in Tamaki's character. Any form of development is necessary to differentiate her from Yuki Nagato.
Looks like the next anime on my list will be Cowboy Bebop, I read a few forum posts about it earlier today and it definitely looks like it will be worth watching. I'm also in the process of looking for a Fall 2013 anime to watch, but I haven't reached any decisions yet. Any thoughts on what I should watch?
I've been playing around with some different programs today for hardware monitoring since I'm bored of CPUID Hardware Monitor. I tried out HWInfo, the built in Windows 8 ones (which actually aren't that bad) and Open Hardware Monitor.
I didn't much like the interface of HWInfo or the Windows 8 ones, and I wasn't entirely sure about downloading OHW considering it's hosted on Cnet. Cnet are as well known as Softpedia for filling your HDD with useless shite whenever you download their files, or trying to decieve you with malware ads... I know the malware ads aren't entirely their fault, but it's done via AdSense, so they could easily block a few of them.
OHW is actually very good, it's completely driver-less and portable, has a few translations and monitors CPU/GPU load per core/total as well as temperatures and clock speeds, very useful. It also has a neat function that means you can display all the information you want as a gadget or in your taskbar. You can see a simple display in the screenshot to the left.
Just to clear this up before the trolls come in, I use Windows 8 since it was given to me for free at university and this laptop was using Vista beforehand... I said Vista, now I shall vomit. As much as I am now used to Windows 8 on my laptop, I'm going to have to go back to 7 as 8 cannot detect my stoneage onboard Intel GPU. I also think I've decided on the case for my new system, an NZXT Phantom 530 in white. I originally wanted the 410, but the radiator spacing in the case is much more restricted than in the 530. While I'm not a fan of 200mm fans (pun intended) since they are generally noisy or make weird ticking noises, the space for a 360mm radiator and the future possibility for a full custom water cooling loop make the extra £20 seem insignificant.
Well, that was a nerdier post than normal, it was kind of fun talking about PC components, I think my girlfriend might kill me if I keep talking to her about them, or going "Look! The new Corsair fans are soooo~ sexy!"... I'm weird. Bye!
Profiles:
Facebook
Twitter
PSN Profiles
Looks like the next anime on my list will be Cowboy Bebop, I read a few forum posts about it earlier today and it definitely looks like it will be worth watching. I'm also in the process of looking for a Fall 2013 anime to watch, but I haven't reached any decisions yet. Any thoughts on what I should watch?
I've been playing around with some different programs today for hardware monitoring since I'm bored of CPUID Hardware Monitor. I tried out HWInfo, the built in Windows 8 ones (which actually aren't that bad) and Open Hardware Monitor.
I didn't much like the interface of HWInfo or the Windows 8 ones, and I wasn't entirely sure about downloading OHW considering it's hosted on Cnet. Cnet are as well known as Softpedia for filling your HDD with useless shite whenever you download their files, or trying to decieve you with malware ads... I know the malware ads aren't entirely their fault, but it's done via AdSense, so they could easily block a few of them.
 |
| Open-Hardware-Monitor Gadget- Sucky specs eh? |
Just to clear this up before the trolls come in, I use Windows 8 since it was given to me for free at university and this laptop was using Vista beforehand... I said Vista, now I shall vomit. As much as I am now used to Windows 8 on my laptop, I'm going to have to go back to 7 as 8 cannot detect my stoneage onboard Intel GPU. I also think I've decided on the case for my new system, an NZXT Phantom 530 in white. I originally wanted the 410, but the radiator spacing in the case is much more restricted than in the 530. While I'm not a fan of 200mm fans (pun intended) since they are generally noisy or make weird ticking noises, the space for a 360mm radiator and the future possibility for a full custom water cooling loop make the extra £20 seem insignificant.
Well, that was a nerdier post than normal, it was kind of fun talking about PC components, I think my girlfriend might kill me if I keep talking to her about them, or going "Look! The new Corsair fans are soooo~ sexy!"... I'm weird. Bye!
Profiles:
PSN Profiles
15/09/2013 - Bamboo Blade and Shingeki no Kyojin 23
Another amazing post title! Yep, today I've sat watching Bamboo Blade and the latest episode of Shingeki. Not very productive, but ah well. I decided to give Demon's Souls a break for today and will continue playing tomorrow. It takes a lot of motivation to do the Tower of Latria and Flamelurker from Stonefang Tunnel has pissed me off enough to last a lifetime.
In regards to Bamboo Blade, I actually had to find an alternative subbing group as the ones included on the DVD are god awful. No matter what media player I used the subtitles were horrid. I've decided to go with [Huzzah-Doremi] since they have generally positive reviews. The video files are only 400p, but I can live without HD every now and then.
Bamboo Blade is actually much funnier in Japanese dub than English dub, the voices seem much better cast (as always) and the humour is clearer. I think the series would be much funnier to someone who is actually Japanese due to the cultural differences. Overall the plot is pretty good and entertaining, but Tamaki Kawazoe comes across as a less-intelligent Yuki Nagato clone (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya).
For the first time in a long time, I actually enjoyed the new episode of Shingeki. They made the same mistake as Sword Art Online which got much worse in the second part of the story, but it looks like they might redeem themselves before the end of the series. At least, I hope so.
Annie's laugh at the end was really creepy though, considering she spends the entire story up to this point displaying no emotion at all. I'm looking forward to seeing how it pans out and if it is at all different to the manga. My personal preference would be to follow the manga exactly.
On a less interesting note, I watched Olympus Has Fallen this evening. The action was really good and the plot didn't make me fall asleep, but I felt like I was watching a movie of Call of Duty, which is slightly off putting. It's good if you want a good two hours of explosions and gunfire, not much in terms of plot though. Another similarity to Call of Duty, go figure.
Last thing to say is if you fancy watching a funny action movie, give Chinese Zodiac a watch. It's a Jackie Chan movie from 2012 where he plays a famous National Relic thief and is tasked with finding the twelve Chinese zodiac heads. The last movie I watched with Jackie Chan was The Forbidden Kingdom and I enjoyed this just as much.
Two daily updates in a row, such amazing consistency! Let's hope I can keep it up.
Profiles:
Facebook
Twitter
PSN Profiles
In regards to Bamboo Blade, I actually had to find an alternative subbing group as the ones included on the DVD are god awful. No matter what media player I used the subtitles were horrid. I've decided to go with [Huzzah-Doremi] since they have generally positive reviews. The video files are only 400p, but I can live without HD every now and then.
Bamboo Blade is actually much funnier in Japanese dub than English dub, the voices seem much better cast (as always) and the humour is clearer. I think the series would be much funnier to someone who is actually Japanese due to the cultural differences. Overall the plot is pretty good and entertaining, but Tamaki Kawazoe comes across as a less-intelligent Yuki Nagato clone (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya).
For the first time in a long time, I actually enjoyed the new episode of Shingeki. They made the same mistake as Sword Art Online which got much worse in the second part of the story, but it looks like they might redeem themselves before the end of the series. At least, I hope so.
Annie's laugh at the end was really creepy though, considering she spends the entire story up to this point displaying no emotion at all. I'm looking forward to seeing how it pans out and if it is at all different to the manga. My personal preference would be to follow the manga exactly.
On a less interesting note, I watched Olympus Has Fallen this evening. The action was really good and the plot didn't make me fall asleep, but I felt like I was watching a movie of Call of Duty, which is slightly off putting. It's good if you want a good two hours of explosions and gunfire, not much in terms of plot though. Another similarity to Call of Duty, go figure.
Last thing to say is if you fancy watching a funny action movie, give Chinese Zodiac a watch. It's a Jackie Chan movie from 2012 where he plays a famous National Relic thief and is tasked with finding the twelve Chinese zodiac heads. The last movie I watched with Jackie Chan was The Forbidden Kingdom and I enjoyed this just as much.
Two daily updates in a row, such amazing consistency! Let's hope I can keep it up.
Profiles:
PSN Profiles
Saturday, 14 September 2013
14/09/2013 - Demon's Souls and One Piece 610
I managed to kick back a bit and play some more Demon's Souls now that I have finished my The Last of Us review. You can probably see why it took me so long by the length of it, but I wanted to cover every base.
On the topic of Demon's Souls after reaching the end of my second playthrough, I discovered that I had made a monumental cock up with my character tendency by accidentally one-shotting the Dregling NPC and stopping myself from getting Pure White Character Tendency... Arse.
Oh well, I fancied a change so I started again using a similar build based on the Temple Knight class and I'm really enjoying it. However, since I don't want to end up doing a total of five playthroughs I'm following a 'Platinum Trophy Guide' on the Demon's Souls wiki which will allow me to get the platinum trophy in just over one playthrough, and so far it is incredibly well written with some thought out and well labelled maps of every level. I'll place a link to the guide at the bottom so you guys can check it out.
I'm thinking I'll go with the Blueblood Sword again due to how quickly the damage scales with it equipped, but I'm tempted to try a dexterity-based build and use a Sharp Uchigatana +5, I'll have to do some research I guess.
The next part of my day - I now have a blu-ray copy of Full Metal Jacket so tomorrow I will be reuniting myself with obtuse amounts of comedic swearing in an otherwise quite serious movie. I haven't watched Full Metal Jacket for a few years, but when I'm nerding out I can still quote lines from it... Yeah...
Also, Yibis released their version of One Piece episode 610 today and I was disappointed. The preview in 609 really hyped up the fight between Vergo and Smoker but after watching it they only punched each other a few times, most of the episodes focus was on Caesar and Vegapunks past. It was cool to hear Vegapunks voice, but I'm getting impatient while waiting for Luffy to kick Caesars ass. GOMU GOMU NO.... GET THE HELL ON WITH IT!
My girlfriend just finished watching the Skypiea arc and really enjoyed it, she enjoyed it so much that every now and then I hear GOMU GOMU NO.... OUGEN RIFLE~! It's actually made me jump a few times, but it's pretty awesome that she likes One Piece as much as me!
Anyways, that's all for today. My fingers are now stumps after typing both this and a portion of my The Last of Us review. I'll post an update tomorrow if my Titan powers have regenerated my fingers! Adios!
Demon's Souls Platinum Trophy Guide
Profiles:
Facebook
Twitter
PSN Profiles
On the topic of Demon's Souls after reaching the end of my second playthrough, I discovered that I had made a monumental cock up with my character tendency by accidentally one-shotting the Dregling NPC and stopping myself from getting Pure White Character Tendency... Arse.
Oh well, I fancied a change so I started again using a similar build based on the Temple Knight class and I'm really enjoying it. However, since I don't want to end up doing a total of five playthroughs I'm following a 'Platinum Trophy Guide' on the Demon's Souls wiki which will allow me to get the platinum trophy in just over one playthrough, and so far it is incredibly well written with some thought out and well labelled maps of every level. I'll place a link to the guide at the bottom so you guys can check it out.
I'm thinking I'll go with the Blueblood Sword again due to how quickly the damage scales with it equipped, but I'm tempted to try a dexterity-based build and use a Sharp Uchigatana +5, I'll have to do some research I guess.
The next part of my day - I now have a blu-ray copy of Full Metal Jacket so tomorrow I will be reuniting myself with obtuse amounts of comedic swearing in an otherwise quite serious movie. I haven't watched Full Metal Jacket for a few years, but when I'm nerding out I can still quote lines from it... Yeah...
Also, Yibis released their version of One Piece episode 610 today and I was disappointed. The preview in 609 really hyped up the fight between Vergo and Smoker but after watching it they only punched each other a few times, most of the episodes focus was on Caesar and Vegapunks past. It was cool to hear Vegapunks voice, but I'm getting impatient while waiting for Luffy to kick Caesars ass. GOMU GOMU NO.... GET THE HELL ON WITH IT!
My girlfriend just finished watching the Skypiea arc and really enjoyed it, she enjoyed it so much that every now and then I hear GOMU GOMU NO.... OUGEN RIFLE~! It's actually made me jump a few times, but it's pretty awesome that she likes One Piece as much as me!
Anyways, that's all for today. My fingers are now stumps after typing both this and a portion of my The Last of Us review. I'll post an update tomorrow if my Titan powers have regenerated my fingers! Adios!
Demon's Souls Platinum Trophy Guide
Profiles:
PSN Profiles
Platinum Review: The Last of Us
 |
| The Last of Us - Ellie & Joel - Wallpaper from Video Games Blogger |
These 'Platinum/100% Reviews' will be comprised of several parts. The general criteria will be: Single Player/Campaign, Multiplayer (Online, Offline, Cooperative, Competitive), Trophies and Final Thoughts. These categories are not set in stone, I will always review everything required for the platinum, but in some reviews certain categories may be missing.
Anyway, without further ado, The Last of Us review!
As always, there will be spoilers! You have been warned.
Singleplayer:
If at any point before reading this review you have done some research (and you probably have) you will have found out that what The Last of Us is famous for is singleplayer. The story is known as being incredibly realistic, enjoyable and emotional. While this is all true, like everything else it has some flaws, but we'll come to that after the positives.
Story:
First off, this game is beautiful in terms of graphics, it's actually surprising that the PS3 can run it, but I would love to see it in true 1080p running on a high end PC with AA and the works.As soon as the game begins we are thrown in to a world on the brink of destruction due to a new epidemic that possesses human beings and turns them into infected killers, basically fungal zombies. As expected the majority of the people originally infected are inhabiting high density population areas such as capital cities, but like most other infections, containment was impossible.
This is generally where the statements such as "Oh look, another zombie game." end. After the opening scenes there is a significant time skip (over 20 years) and we are placed in control of the same character from the opening scene, Joel. Judging by the people Joel is keeping company with, he is clearly up to something illegal. The opening mission involves you chasing a former business associate who has decided to ditch you and steal all your loot, almost like a random group member in any MMO. As you can guess, he knows you're coming. You fight your way through some basic infected humans and thugs to get to him and meet someone you're not expecting, Marlene, Leader of the Fireflies.
In the aptly named "Zone" the government and it's armed guards are in place to keep infection out and keep the populace in order. The main threat to this society is the rebel faction known as the Fireflies who use "Look for the Light" as their phrase. Hopefully, I will not need to explain that. Marlene informs you that she was seeking your mutual benefactor for help, but now that's no longer possible and she wants your help instead, oh great.
After a short area with that demonstrates some basic controls and stealth gameplay, the other main character enters the picture. Ellie, or a copy of Ellen Page, the choice is yours. She's not the most lovable character ever, but as you can imagine, kids lives are hardly normal in the post-apocalyptic world. Now you are assigned to escorting Ellie out of the city, which of course does not go well. I won't go much further than that with plot, but I am fairly certain you can work out a lot of it without even playing it.
Weapons, Crafting, Enemies, Collectibles etc:
Simply put, too many collectibles and not enough craftable materials. In the lower difficulties you are provided with hundreds of components and very little to do with them. On my normal playthrough I had almost full supplies and crafting materials throughout the entire game, boring.The collectibles number over 100, somewhere around 130 I believe and vary from Firefly Pendants to various notes from survivors and comic books for Ellie. Uncharted had a lot of collectibles too if I remember correctly, but they were no where near as tedious to collect, oh sure you can do it via chapter select, but if it glitches (which it normally does) you'll lose all of your collectibles and probably break something in front of you.
The lack of enemy diversity is slightly annoying, but at the same time it makes it much easier to learn tactics. The hunter and firefly skins don't vary very much and there are only three kinds of infected, one of which you rarely see. Also, if you are not paying complete attention, expect to have someone sneak up on you and hit you with a baseball bat a few times.
Weapons are one thing I won't actually complain about, the upgrades actually make a notable difference and the variety from a bow to a magnum and flamethrower is a welcome concept. The bow becomes your best friend in some of the stealth scenarios, and the flamethrower completely destroys the infected. I do wish the parts were easier to collect in the game, but they are not that hard to come by anyway.
Criticisms:
In general, the singleplayer is pretty solid, however it is not all sunshine and rainbows. The crafting system is fairly basic considering I now know that all I need to make a Nail Bomb is some scissors and a bag of compost, so +1 for anyone planning on blowing up a vault sometime soon. The mid-level infected (known as Clickers) are also overpowered considering the easiest way to take them down is two to three headshots, but they flail about so much you'll be lucky to consistently execute the strategy before going in to a blind rage and firing a shotgun shell through their torso.Another flaw would be the fact that you need to replay the game through at least three times if you don't glitch just to collect all of the weapon parts necessary and get all of the trophies relating to difficulty. The game is enjoyable the first time through, but after the second time it will take a lot of motivation to finish.
Speaking of glitches, this game is full of them. Some of the more notable ones include trophies not unlocking, collectibles, parts, stat upgrades, toolboxes and weapon upgrades resetting when you start New Game+. This is easily fixable by replaying the last level of the game and starting New Game+ again, but if you have not read about it prior to starting, you won't find your next playthrough as enjoyable or any easier.
One of the major problems I have with the actual story though is how the hell Joel survives the university incident... I am pretty sure some amateur stitching, bandages and penicillin is not enough to save you from a one inch hole through your stomach.
Also, replayability.... There is not much of that, at all... But I cannot take away credit for Naughty Dog producing an incredible story so it earns a 9/10.
Multiplayer:
This is where it gets interesting, and actually for a lot of people, unpleasant. If you have been reading my daily updates since I started this blog, you know where I stand on the multiplayer.
The multiplayer in The Last of Us is known as 'Factions'. When you first enter the mode you are instructed to chose your faction, a choice of two: Firefly or Hunter. The faction you choose is one you are stuck with for twelve ingame weeks, which advance as you complete your multiplayer matches with one match being equal to one day. The completion of the 'journey' is required for a gold trophy, one for each faction, so get ready to enjoy - or not - 160+ matches!
Surviving the twelve week journey is not as simple as just completing matches as you have to provide for a clan of virtual people, or your Facebook friends if you fancy seeing them all die when you screw up. The number of clan members you have influences various unlocks to alter your appearance, such as masks and helmets. The issues start to arise with the growth of your clan, as the more clan members you have, the better you have to perform in the matches to provide for them. This means that the higher tier unlocks like the skull mask are more of a rarity than the basic gear. The other variable that Naughty Dog decided to throw in is missions that occur at fixed points throughout your journey such as disease outbreaks or enemy attacks. Sometimes these attacks are welcome as they can trim your population by up to 60% meaning you can unlock new weapons and perks quicker, but if you fail a 100% population risk mission (of which there are five), you have to begin the entire journey again.
In Factions there are currently three game modes: Survivors, Supply Raid and Interrogation. Two of these modes are a variation of team deathmatch, but Interrogation is a bit more interesting. In Supply Raid each team starts with twenty reinforcements, or lives. The first player to reach 0 reinforcements and have no living players remaining loses. Survivors consists of four to seven rounds of team deathmatch, in each round the player only has one life so the objective is to eliminate the enemy team first. Interrogation involves hunting down enemy team members and interrogating them for the location of a lock box, the first team to open the opposing teams lock box wins. Unfortunately, most interrogation matches end in a tie game.
Your customisation takes the form of the classic loadout system allocating you set number of points with which to choose your weapons and perks, at max level you are allowed up to thirteen loadout points. The game also provides a few default loadouts with higher level gear, but you cannot customise them so you probably will not use them for long.
The crafting in multiplayer is much the same as single player, with items such as molotovs taking an extra item. All of the weapons present in single player are also present, as well as in-match purchases such as body armour or more powerful weapons like the military sniper.
Score is calculated by the number of parts the player acquires throughout the match. Parts are gathered by downing/executing enemies, crafting items, gifting other players items, reviving team mates and other miscellaneous things like stealth kills and headshots. The parts that you earn (even the ones you spend on weapons and armour) are converted into supplies which sustain your clan and unlock new perks/weapons.
Now, 160+ matches may not be a problem in a game like Battlefield 3 or Call of Duty, but with only three game modes, awful equipment balancing and a large number of problems, it becomes a big issue.
Pros:
One of the main pros of the multiplayer is that it is unique. The crafting system plays a huge part in how the game will play out and how well your team utilise their limited ammo and parts also makes a big difference. If you're expecting the multiplayer to be similar to Uncharted, it isn't.TLOU is not as fast-paced as Uncharted and most of the time if you go in all guns blazing, you're going to get annihilated. This creates a tactical atmosphere where voice communication can really help you win. To allow for fairer matches, Naughty Dog has also implemented a system allowing you to choose games that do not allow parties which levels the playing field slightly for newer players. The metagame is not a bad addition either, it means that players have to focus more on things other than their K/D ratio and actually pay attention to their team mates.
Cons:
Sadly, this list is longer than the pros. Overall, multiplayer feels like it was a last minute decision and has been stapled to a game that does not actually need one. In terms of weapons, the semi-auto rifle will out snipe most hunting rifle players and molotovs still cover far too much area, even after a nerf that reduced their radius by 20%.The single biggest problem with the multiplayer though, is the matchmaking. You will have seen me complain about this almost every day because ND just cannot seem to get it right. Most of the time (even in the afternoon/evening) I am matched with players that are -6 hours to my timezone. The source code for this game seems to somehow think that Europe and the Philippines are close geolocations. Sure they are... if by geolocation you mean nearest planet.
The matchmaking problems do not end at being awful in terms of ping matching, they also suck in terms of weeks survived (basically rank). Below you will see a screenshot that I posted in a recent daily update and it displays exactly what I mean. What makes it worse, is that it is not an infrequent occurrence.
 |
| Naughty Dogs awesome matchmaking! It's so balanced! - The Last of Us Multiplayer |
Naughty Dog also decided to implement a lag compensation system, which allows player with higher ping to play at a better level than they would otherwise be able to. The issue is that it is completely over the top. Players who have high pings in this game can be almost indestructible, such as surviving three molotovs and taking on a shotgun user with their fists, and winning. It is not at all pretty.
The other system TLOU uses in multiplayer is a welfare system. If the losing team is a certain amount behind, they begin getting more fruitful tool boxes that give them insane amounts of supplies, and usually 2x4 sticks and upgrading materials. If the enemy team does not charge with you with many pointy sticks, expect about fifteen molotovs to be flying through the air soon afterwards.
One thing that multiple people have brought to my attention is the lack of infected in the multiplayer mode. Left 4 Dead 2 had a cool way of handling the infected, but even a basic survival wave system similar to nazi zombies or online co-op missions would have been a welcome addition.
The final problems that I will say have a significant effect are upgraded 2x4 sticks and the Gifter/Brawler perks.
Upgraded sticks will become your most feared object in this game, if someone gets close to you with one, it's too late... You're dead. The sticks inflict a 1-hit down and with Brawler II you can repair them during the match as well as get an extra hit (two instead of one), it's ridiculous and should be fixed.
Gifter is one of the best perks in the game, it's amazing for generating parts and giving your team enough explosives to sink a continent, but the fact that you mainly get molotovs and nail bombs when you give the gift makes it a very dangerous perk. The sad thing is at higher levels everyone uses it, because if they do not, they cannot compete.
The multiplayer has potential, but it is far from living up to the hype that preceded it. Due to all of these problems and Naughty Dog's lack of transparency and information the multiplayer scrapes a 5/10.
Trophies:
The trophies in this game are not particularly difficult, they are just time consuming. Even if you are following a trophy guide, you will not see your first trophy until midway through the story. There are trophies for each difficulty which are stackable and apply to new game and new game+. The rest of the offline trophies are related to collectibles and optional conversations as well as upgrading Joel and his weapons to the maximum levels. There are currently only four multiplayer trophies in the list; two bronze and two gold.The multiplayer trophies require you to win one game of survivors and one game of supply raid as well as building a clan size of forty. The two gold trophies are related to finishing the Hunter and Firefly journeys which are likely to be your last trophies before your platinum.
My overall advice is to use a guide for obtaining all of the collectibles, it would be impressive if you could accomplish it without a walkthrough though. New Game+ is actually still glitched so you can complete all of the difficulty trophies and possibly the upgrading trophies in just two playthroughs, one on Easy or whatever you fancy and one on Survivor+.
A final piece of advice with regards to the collectibles is, keep checking your status screen ingame. Sometimes a conversation will glitch or a collectible will not trigger and you will need to reload your checkpoint and collect it again. I actually missed a conversation and unless you have a fantastic memory, you will never know which one you have missed.
If you want that platinum as quick as possible, make sure to educate yourself on the possible glitches before you begin, it could save you a lot of time.
If you have a little patience and can keep finding motivation to listen to the same dialect multiple times, achieving the platinum in this game should be reasonably easy. The difficulty rating that I would personally give is a 6/10 and a 6/10 overall.
Final Thoughts:
The Last of Us is an utterly amazing looking game with a great story, but it is let down by numerous technical glitches which show no sign of being fixed and a lackluster multiplayer that leaves most players wanting. As a trophy hoarder, I cannot recommend this game but if you are looking for an enjoyable single player experience and some variation from the cookie cutter FPS-style multiplayer as well as seeing how well the PS3 can perform, give it a shot... but with a pinch of salt, or maybe a lake of it.Singleplayer: 9/10
Multiplayer: 5/10
Trophies: 6/10
Overall Score: 7/10
You can purchase the various editions of The Last of Us from Amazon.com:
The Last of Us - Playstation 3
The Last of Us: Survival Edition - Playstation 3
The Last of Us: Post-Pandemic Edition
The Last of Us:
Official Site
Trophy Guide
Forums
Profiles:
PSN Profiles
Wednesday, 11 September 2013
11/09/2013 - General Update, Demon's Souls, Demon's Souls & more Demon's Souls
Good day! Sorry that I haven't been doing as many updates recently, I fell ill after my girlfriend's pizza party and I've been pretty sick since then, so, my bad. I managed to proofread, edit and publish my Future Diary review, but not much else.
Anyways, now that my brain and other organs are back under my control (too much information?), I decided to continue my second play through of Demon's Souls. New Game+ is enjoying handing my arse to me on every possible occasion, but I'm soldiering on through the endless hoards of Dreglings, Black Phantoms and believe it or not, Demon's.
The main problem with Demon's Souls is that it is incredibly repetitive. The environments may be quite pretty and well designed, when you can actually see them (Tower of Latria, ughhh). But otherwise, the enemy diversity leaves much to be desired, especially considering how different and challenging the boss fights are. Don't get me wrong, the game has a lot to offer in regards to side quests and the various World Tendencies, but it follows the typical Japanese game algorithm where 'grinding is winning'. I played World of Warcraft for 6 years, I can't be bothered with grinding any more. I'm enjoying my Blueblood Sword though, but one-shotting everything with Light Weapon and 99 Luck only stays fun for so long.
Tomorrow, I will be out for most of the day, but I'll make sure to save some time for gaming and working on my The Last of Us review. Unfortunately due to the length of the review, it might not be published for a few days, so bare with me guys.
Another things to look forward to are the One Piece special, Episode of Merry. I just have to wait for Yibis to sub it, which could be a while considering how thorough they are with the fansubbing. The upcoming JRPG tribute game by Ubisoft, Child of Light, also looks incredible. With the interesting art style, turn-based combat and the sheer number of systems it's being released on, I can see it being a huge success.
You can check out the trailer for Child of Light here:
Sadly that's all I have to say for today, but I'm sure I'll have much more to post once I get done with Demon's Souls and start playing Kingdom Hearts HD. That's something I'm really looking forward to.
Profiles:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Resiam
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Resiam
PSN Profiles: http://www.psnprofiles.com/Resiam
Anyways, now that my brain and other organs are back under my control (too much information?), I decided to continue my second play through of Demon's Souls. New Game+ is enjoying handing my arse to me on every possible occasion, but I'm soldiering on through the endless hoards of Dreglings, Black Phantoms and believe it or not, Demon's.
The main problem with Demon's Souls is that it is incredibly repetitive. The environments may be quite pretty and well designed, when you can actually see them (Tower of Latria, ughhh). But otherwise, the enemy diversity leaves much to be desired, especially considering how different and challenging the boss fights are. Don't get me wrong, the game has a lot to offer in regards to side quests and the various World Tendencies, but it follows the typical Japanese game algorithm where 'grinding is winning'. I played World of Warcraft for 6 years, I can't be bothered with grinding any more. I'm enjoying my Blueblood Sword though, but one-shotting everything with Light Weapon and 99 Luck only stays fun for so long.
Tomorrow, I will be out for most of the day, but I'll make sure to save some time for gaming and working on my The Last of Us review. Unfortunately due to the length of the review, it might not be published for a few days, so bare with me guys.
Another things to look forward to are the One Piece special, Episode of Merry. I just have to wait for Yibis to sub it, which could be a while considering how thorough they are with the fansubbing. The upcoming JRPG tribute game by Ubisoft, Child of Light, also looks incredible. With the interesting art style, turn-based combat and the sheer number of systems it's being released on, I can see it being a huge success.
You can check out the trailer for Child of Light here:
Sadly that's all I have to say for today, but I'm sure I'll have much more to post once I get done with Demon's Souls and start playing Kingdom Hearts HD. That's something I'm really looking forward to.
Profiles:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Resiam
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Resiam
PSN Profiles: http://www.psnprofiles.com/Resiam
Tuesday, 10 September 2013
Anime Review: Mirai Nikki/Future Diary
 |
| The main character of Mirai Nikki/Future Diary - Yuuki Amano |
Well here it is, my first anme review, and what a series it is!
Mirai Nikki or Future Diary in English is a series that I have been interested in for some time, but unfortunately due to other projects and happenings, I was unable to watch it. This all ended a few weeks ago when I just finished the AIKa series and was looking for something new and exciting to grab my interest.
I remembered watching the pilot episode on a video streaming site back in March and thinking 'You know, this could be really interesting.' Overall, a fairly accurate opinion. But enough about my reasons for watching it, the review is what you want to read! Let's try and find the reasons why you should watch it!
Warning: This post will contain plot spoilers, possibly major, but I will try to be careful with wording.
Plot:
Future Diary is a horror/thriller anime that is based around 12 characters known as Diary Owners. The Diary Owners are people who have been keeping diaries across various mediums (phones, scrolls, books etcetera) and have a common 'imaginary' friend known as Deus Ex Machina or The God of Time and Space.
Unfortunately, Deus (voice by Norio Wakamoto) is not long for this world and is looking for a means to entertain himself, while simultaneously selecting a new successor for his position. Being the God of Time sounds pretty cool right? Well, keep reading.
Deus brings together twelve people from completely different ages, backgrounds and positions of power and grants them a new device, a Future Diary. The Diary has the ability to tell the Owner their future for a certain period of time, but the future it displays is unique to a person and their abilities. For example, one of the main characters, Yuuki Amano's Diary only tracks his observations around him, and not much about himself while another character's Diary will only work for investigations, or escaping.
The twelve selected Diary Owners are put in to a rather sadistic game, which gives them the objective of killing all the other Diary owners and assuming the position of God. Some of the contestants are highly interested in this position and go all-out to kill the other Owners, while others do not even want to be involved in the game and choose to hide, hoping they will be forgotten.
The main complications with the game arise due to the nature of it - murder. Third party characters and relatives get involved and the story becomes incredibly complex and involving several high-ranking officers and politicians, meanwhile the two main characters (who are just high school students) struggle to survive against daily attacks and betrayals while trying to keep their friends out of trouble.
Character Development:
Yuuki Amano (voiced by Misuzu Togashi) is the first character we see in the series and no offence intended, but he's a loner. He refuses to socialize and has absolutely no interest in people. This becomes more apparent when you overhear a conversation between his classmates explaining that all he does is type his thoughts and observations in to his phone - a diary. This doesn't change when he gets home, as he lives alone most of the time because of his mother's work and his father not being around due to a recent divorce.
This will immediately start showing why his nature is so closed-off and why he shuts himself in his room, hides under a blanket and zones out to speak Deus and Murmur.
The other 'main' character is Gasai Yuno (voiced by Tomasa Murata), an innocent and friendly looking girl who is also pulled in to Deus' twisted game. Notice how I said innocent and friendly looking. Yuno has some very dark secrets and a schizophrenic personality that displays itself at least once per episode. She also has some of the creepiest facial expressions you'll ever see, as well as a habit for saying incredibly dark things in a cutsie tone while laughing like a maniac. She's weird, but a very good counterpart to our harmless and scared Yuuki-kun.
 |
| The incredible - yet immensely creepy - Gasai yuno. Stares in to your soul, right? |
The other Diary Owners also have relatively well-explained plots and sometimes have most of an episode dedicated to them. It was a very good decision that the author made to not focus the story entirely on Yuuki and Yuno, but display the conflicts/alliances between other Diary Owners as well. In most cases, the characters that are introduced earlier have deeper back-stories, but that is to be expected of a short series.
There are also a large number of third-party characters involved as well, some of which could do with more detailed explanations, but I find that to be the case with almost every anime.
On a whole, the character development is actually very good and should keep you interested throughout the series, Yuuki's emotional moments might get a bit annoying, but he's only a lonely high school kid, his character is probably very accurate.
Animation, Voicing and Music:
Animation throughout the series is pretty solid, there don't seem to be any lazy moments where the animators have used duplicated frames (not as common these days as it was back in the early 2000s). If there are any, they aren't as noteworthy as the ones in AIKa, which same 3 second fighting animation displayed for over 30 seconds on two to three separate occasions in a single episode. It might just be because I watched the uncensored Blu-ray version, but it did seem particularly smooth. Also, with a series like Future Diary, you cannot enjoy it to the full extent while it is censored. This doesn't apply if you're squeamish, but who doesn't enjoy an animated bloodbath? I'm not crazy...
Voice acting is very well cast, I don't often have an issue with voice casting in Japanese dubs, but in some cases their English counterparts drive me insane. Naruto and his 'Believe it' catchphrase springs to mind, or the 4Kids Sanji from One Piece, ugh.
Misuzu Togashi is a very good match for our protagonist, Amano Yuuki, a very convincing match. This is especially true considering that until I did research for this post, I had no idea that Yuuki's Seiyuu was a female. Whoops.
My hat goes off to Tomosa Murata for her role as Gasai Yuno. It takes a lot of talent to execute such a weird character so well. The ability to say those disturbing sentences without ruining your characters tone is not a gift everyone is blessed with. I do however find it strange she has not had more roles in the anime scene, but she's definitely one to watch.
The music of Future Diary is not something that jumps in your face, the scene changes and background music were always subtle, but effective. This series has a lot of flashbacks, thoughts and some heavy dialogue scenes lasting for several minutes, so the subtle music goes appreciated. I've lost count of how many times I've been watching a Hollywood film and I've not been able to hear the dialect due to some deafening (albeit good) musical score.
The opening and ending themes are not at all subtle though. This is also a good point since an anime so largely focussed around murder and survival wouldn't work with a cute moe opening theme since it would kill the entire atmosphere almost as brutally as the show kills characters. The titles and artists of the opening and ending themes can be found at the bottom of the post.
Ending:
Probably the lowest note of the series in my opinion, but it still wasn't terrible. The ending left much to be desired, however this year the OVA titled Future Diary: Redial was released. The OVA is the length of a single episode and is used to fill in the gaps and better explain the events after the closing of the series. It does a good job of this, as well as giving a more final ending to an otherwise exceptional series.
Conclusion:
My final thoughts on this anime are that it is absolutely worth watching. It's not often these days that I will sit and watch ten to fifteen episodes in a single day, but I found Mirai Nikki hard to put down. The characters and plot will keep you interested, the frequent twists will completely throw you, and the cliffhanger endings to each episode will make it even harder to avoid saying 'I'll just watch one more episode.'
Watch it. It will be worth it.
Don't forget to share, subscribe and comment on my first review. Let me know what you think and what you want from these reviews in the future (my Diary doesn't tell me)!
Music used in Mirai Nikki (Future Diary):
Opening Theme:
#1: "Kūsō Mesorogiwi" (空想メソロギヰ) by Yousei Teikoku (eps 2-14)
#2: "Dead END" by Faylan (eps 15-)
Ending Theme:
Links:
#1: "Blood teller" by Faylan (eps 1-14)
#2: "Filament" by Yousei Teikoku (eps 15-)
Source: Anime News Network
Anime News Network: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=12896
My Anime List: http://myanimelist.net/anime/10620/Mirai_Nikki_%28TV%29
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Diary
Profiles:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Resiam
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Resiam
PSN Profiles: http://www.psnprofiles.com/Resiam
Monday, 9 September 2013
08/09/2013 - The Last of Us Platinum and Bamboo Blade
This is a late post since I forgot to change it from a draft (derrrrrp).My bad!
IT'S OVER! IT'S FINALLY OVER! This morning I finally finished the multiplayer on The Last of Us and promptly began playing Demon's Souls. It's kind of sad really, considering I did incredibly well on my last six or so matches. What really sucks is that I finished Week 12 with less than 85 survivors... Which isn't enough to get the skull mask. Lame, but, oh well. Here's a photo!
I'm hoping that when they release the DLC for this game that it is purely singleplayer content - maybe explaining a bit more about when Joel met Tess or some of the past between Bill and Frank, that would be cool right?
But, this is Naughty Dog we're talking about, and considering what the DLC trophies were like for Uncharted 3, we probably know how it will actually pan out. Getting the platinum trophy also means that now I have to write a review on the game, not sure how well I will keep my polite demeanour when it comes to reviewing the multiplayer, but I'll try!
As I said before, I've started Demon's Souls and though the difficulty is incredibly punishing, it's still very much enjoyable. I was actually tempted to do it via the glitching route and duplication which makes the game much easier, but now I'm not so sure about doing it that way. The main thing that is tempting me to do it, is how easy it is to execute the duplicating glitch.
Another thing to look forward to is that I've ordered my copy of Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD from the UK and got a deal to save £5 on the Prima Walkthrough. The only reason I decided to buy the walkthrough was because of the exceptional quality of Prima's The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Legendary Edition walkthrough.
I'll make sure to upload a picture once the package has arrived! Unfortunately, I still don't have enough funds to build my new PC, which is sort of hindering my plans considering how limited I am with the functionality of this laptop.
Finally, I started watching Bamboo Blade! Unfortunately, I couldn't find a very good version so the subtitles are not spectacular, but it does not take much away from the plot. I would prefer 720p or 1080p, but I can cope with 480p if I have to. My girlfriend is trying to get me to watch Cowboy Bebop next and I think I've given in. I wouldn't normally, but it has been reviewed many times as an 'anime masterpiece' so I don't have much to lose.
Speaking of my girlfriend, it's her birthday tomorrow! I'm not sure I'll get much work done on the reviews, but I'll make sure to post a daily update as always (and not forget to change it from draft status).
Profiles:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Resiam
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Resiam
PSN Profiles: http://www.psnprofiles.com/Resiam
IT'S OVER! IT'S FINALLY OVER! This morning I finally finished the multiplayer on The Last of Us and promptly began playing Demon's Souls. It's kind of sad really, considering I did incredibly well on my last six or so matches. What really sucks is that I finished Week 12 with less than 85 survivors... Which isn't enough to get the skull mask. Lame, but, oh well. Here's a photo!
 |
| The Last of Us - Platinum Trophy (It can't be for nothing) - FINALLY! |
I'm hoping that when they release the DLC for this game that it is purely singleplayer content - maybe explaining a bit more about when Joel met Tess or some of the past between Bill and Frank, that would be cool right?
But, this is Naughty Dog we're talking about, and considering what the DLC trophies were like for Uncharted 3, we probably know how it will actually pan out. Getting the platinum trophy also means that now I have to write a review on the game, not sure how well I will keep my polite demeanour when it comes to reviewing the multiplayer, but I'll try!
As I said before, I've started Demon's Souls and though the difficulty is incredibly punishing, it's still very much enjoyable. I was actually tempted to do it via the glitching route and duplication which makes the game much easier, but now I'm not so sure about doing it that way. The main thing that is tempting me to do it, is how easy it is to execute the duplicating glitch.
Another thing to look forward to is that I've ordered my copy of Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD from the UK and got a deal to save £5 on the Prima Walkthrough. The only reason I decided to buy the walkthrough was because of the exceptional quality of Prima's The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Legendary Edition walkthrough.
I'll make sure to upload a picture once the package has arrived! Unfortunately, I still don't have enough funds to build my new PC, which is sort of hindering my plans considering how limited I am with the functionality of this laptop.
Finally, I started watching Bamboo Blade! Unfortunately, I couldn't find a very good version so the subtitles are not spectacular, but it does not take much away from the plot. I would prefer 720p or 1080p, but I can cope with 480p if I have to. My girlfriend is trying to get me to watch Cowboy Bebop next and I think I've given in. I wouldn't normally, but it has been reviewed many times as an 'anime masterpiece' so I don't have much to lose.
Speaking of my girlfriend, it's her birthday tomorrow! I'm not sure I'll get much work done on the reviews, but I'll make sure to post a daily update as always (and not forget to change it from draft status).
Profiles:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Resiam
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Resiam
PSN Profiles: http://www.psnprofiles.com/Resiam
Saturday, 7 September 2013
07/09/2013 - The Last of Us Multiplayer & One Piece 609
Well it's almost over, I'm now on Week 12, Day 2 of my Hunter journey and I actually had fun playing today. I'm still slightly irritated by the facemelting ability of the Flamethrower, but so few people check the forums for updates that not many people are using it.
I actually adjusted my main loadout slightly as well. By switching the Silenced SAR to the standard one and setting the Shotgun as a purchasable weapon, my scores have improved dramatically and I actually have a use for the eight 'cheaper purchased weapon' boosters that I have accumulated over the past few weeks.
As I stated in the first paragraph, today was my first enjoyable experience on this multiplayer in the last week or so. There were a few moments that got me midly annoyed. All of those moments involved either rushers, poorly matchmade teams or ludicrous amounts of molotovs and nail bombs flying through the air.
If you've ever paid The Last of Us forums a visit (and you should, they're hilarious), you will have noticed that pretty much one in five posts consists entirely of bitching about how overpowered Molotovs with Explosive Expert 2 are. Don't get me wrong, the nerf on the aforementioned perk has reduced them slightly, but it still covers an obtuse area when thrown.
Also, lag makes players pixel incarnations of God. I was involved in a 1v1 on Bill's Town in the early afternoon and ended up being smokebombed, luckily I was quite far away from the player who threw it, so I recovered and fired 4 point-blank shotgun shells in to his chest, only to be stabbed in the front and lose the game. Now please, my dear readers, if you can find evidence of a man surviving even two shotgun shells to the chest, let me know. For you One Piece fans, Devil Fruit users don't count! ;)
Warning: Spoilers ahead!
The other part of today was taken up watching One Piece (and fixing a bathroom faucet after it blew up in my face, but we'll gloss over that). Episode 609 seemed to flow incredibly slowly. It was a bit strange seeing Law get his heart crushed (literally, not metaphorically) but we barely saw Luffy fight at all. The next episode looks like it will be good though, with the upcoming fight between Smoker and Vergo! I'm looking forward to the Zoro vs. Monet scene as well, but I believe that will air in episode 612, not 610.
Overall, not a bad episode, but it could have been better. Yibis fansubs always make the series more enjoyable.
That's all for today! There be as many as three posts tomorrow so look forward to that! Goodnight!
Profiles:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Resiam
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Resiam
PSN Profiles: http://www.psnprofiles.com/Resiam
I actually adjusted my main loadout slightly as well. By switching the Silenced SAR to the standard one and setting the Shotgun as a purchasable weapon, my scores have improved dramatically and I actually have a use for the eight 'cheaper purchased weapon' boosters that I have accumulated over the past few weeks.
As I stated in the first paragraph, today was my first enjoyable experience on this multiplayer in the last week or so. There were a few moments that got me midly annoyed. All of those moments involved either rushers, poorly matchmade teams or ludicrous amounts of molotovs and nail bombs flying through the air.
If you've ever paid The Last of Us forums a visit (and you should, they're hilarious), you will have noticed that pretty much one in five posts consists entirely of bitching about how overpowered Molotovs with Explosive Expert 2 are. Don't get me wrong, the nerf on the aforementioned perk has reduced them slightly, but it still covers an obtuse area when thrown.
Also, lag makes players pixel incarnations of God. I was involved in a 1v1 on Bill's Town in the early afternoon and ended up being smokebombed, luckily I was quite far away from the player who threw it, so I recovered and fired 4 point-blank shotgun shells in to his chest, only to be stabbed in the front and lose the game. Now please, my dear readers, if you can find evidence of a man surviving even two shotgun shells to the chest, let me know. For you One Piece fans, Devil Fruit users don't count! ;)
Warning: Spoilers ahead!
The other part of today was taken up watching One Piece (and fixing a bathroom faucet after it blew up in my face, but we'll gloss over that). Episode 609 seemed to flow incredibly slowly. It was a bit strange seeing Law get his heart crushed (literally, not metaphorically) but we barely saw Luffy fight at all. The next episode looks like it will be good though, with the upcoming fight between Smoker and Vergo! I'm looking forward to the Zoro vs. Monet scene as well, but I believe that will air in episode 612, not 610.
Overall, not a bad episode, but it could have been better. Yibis fansubs always make the series more enjoyable.
That's all for today! There be as many as three posts tomorrow so look forward to that! Goodnight!
Profiles:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Resiam
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Resiam
PSN Profiles: http://www.psnprofiles.com/Resiam
Friday, 6 September 2013
06/09/2013 - The Last of Us Multiplayer and World War Z
Good evening! It's been another day of multiplayer on *that* game, and as usual it hasn't been particularly fun. I've spent a good portion of the day trying to finish up this wretched multiplayer and in all honesty, I'm losing the will to live.
The most recent live update has tweaked the Explosives Expert perk, the Hunting Rifle and the Flamethrower. Let's evaluate these one-by-one, shall we?
1) Explosives Expert - This ability has been nerfed from 15% for stage one and 30% for stage two to 10/20%, and rightfully so. As a forum poster stated on the official Naughty Dog forums the other day "Factions mode should be renamed to Molotov Dodgeball". Even with the reduced radius from the nerf, molotovs are still far too easy to come by. Not to mention pretty much every player that has unlocked the perk uses it. I'm going to be a whiner here but today in a single match of Survivors consisting of six rounds I saw twenty-seven molotovs and twenty-three nail bombs. This is ridiculous, there were more explosives than bullets.
2) Hunting Rifle - The buff for this gun was actually needed, considering the average player who wanted to try sniping would just get annihilated by someone using a semi-auto on the other side of the map. They increased the scope speed and reduced the reload time, thus making the gun more feasible during high-level matches. I still prefer the semi-auto and burst rifle, but I do like the improvements.
3) Flamethrower - Another buff that was probably needed, however I think ND went a bit overboard considering the speed that the flamethrower inflicts damage now can destroy all your armor and kill you in less than three seconds. Ouch. Still, it's more avoidable than a molotov and rarely used, so I guess I can't complain.
The next screenshot (followed by even more whining) will display how terrible the matchmaking system still is. <sarcasm/>Enjoy my pro photography skills!
As you can clearly see by the above photo, it still sucks. I wonder if their system couldn't grasp that sticking the four highest ranked players on the same team was a really bad idea, especially in a 'no parties' match.
Although all the above information is negative. I have one that really takes the biscuit. Today I was one shot (instant KO) by a 9mm pistol to the chest while wearing full body armour. I think some people might be exploiting a bug. Has this happened to anyone else? If so, let me know!
In other slightly happier news, I pre-ordered my copy of Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD Remix! Unfortunately it won't arrive here until the 24th of September, but I can live with that.
No news on finalizing my PC build either. If I had the money I'd be tempted to buy one of the new 8Pack systems from Overclockers UK. The guy who is designing and building them has a damn good reputation and several records under his belt.
I also watched World War Z today which wasn't actually that bad, although it was pretty much the plot for every other zombie movie and novel. I don't really have any gripes with the movie, but some of the plot had flaws. The entire opening scene looked as if it had been ripped from The Last of Us intro.
Well that's enough ranting from me. The Mirai Nikki review is almost ready and I'm very sorry for the delay, but I'm a perfectionist when it comes to writing these reviews.
As usual, let me know any of your opinions and thoughts on the topics discussed today. I'm very interested in talking to some other people who have watched Mirai Nikki to get their opinions on the series and the Redial OVA.
Overclockers/8Pack Builds: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=43&catid=2474&subid=2642
The Last of Us Live Update Notes: http://community.us.playstation.com/t5/The-Last-of-Us-Multiplayer/Live-Update-to-Multiplayer/m-p/41533903#U41533903
Profiles:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Resiam
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Resiam
PSN Profiles: http://www.psnprofiles.com/Resiam
The most recent live update has tweaked the Explosives Expert perk, the Hunting Rifle and the Flamethrower. Let's evaluate these one-by-one, shall we?
1) Explosives Expert - This ability has been nerfed from 15% for stage one and 30% for stage two to 10/20%, and rightfully so. As a forum poster stated on the official Naughty Dog forums the other day "Factions mode should be renamed to Molotov Dodgeball". Even with the reduced radius from the nerf, molotovs are still far too easy to come by. Not to mention pretty much every player that has unlocked the perk uses it. I'm going to be a whiner here but today in a single match of Survivors consisting of six rounds I saw twenty-seven molotovs and twenty-three nail bombs. This is ridiculous, there were more explosives than bullets.
2) Hunting Rifle - The buff for this gun was actually needed, considering the average player who wanted to try sniping would just get annihilated by someone using a semi-auto on the other side of the map. They increased the scope speed and reduced the reload time, thus making the gun more feasible during high-level matches. I still prefer the semi-auto and burst rifle, but I do like the improvements.
3) Flamethrower - Another buff that was probably needed, however I think ND went a bit overboard considering the speed that the flamethrower inflicts damage now can destroy all your armor and kill you in less than three seconds. Ouch. Still, it's more avoidable than a molotov and rarely used, so I guess I can't complain.
The next screenshot (followed by even more whining) will display how terrible the matchmaking system still is. <sarcasm/>Enjoy my pro photography skills!
.JPG "The Last of Us Matchmaking") |
| Naughty Dog and their 'much improved' matchmaking process... Yeah, no. |
Although all the above information is negative. I have one that really takes the biscuit. Today I was one shot (instant KO) by a 9mm pistol to the chest while wearing full body armour. I think some people might be exploiting a bug. Has this happened to anyone else? If so, let me know!
In other slightly happier news, I pre-ordered my copy of Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD Remix! Unfortunately it won't arrive here until the 24th of September, but I can live with that.
No news on finalizing my PC build either. If I had the money I'd be tempted to buy one of the new 8Pack systems from Overclockers UK. The guy who is designing and building them has a damn good reputation and several records under his belt.
I also watched World War Z today which wasn't actually that bad, although it was pretty much the plot for every other zombie movie and novel. I don't really have any gripes with the movie, but some of the plot had flaws. The entire opening scene looked as if it had been ripped from The Last of Us intro.
Well that's enough ranting from me. The Mirai Nikki review is almost ready and I'm very sorry for the delay, but I'm a perfectionist when it comes to writing these reviews.
As usual, let me know any of your opinions and thoughts on the topics discussed today. I'm very interested in talking to some other people who have watched Mirai Nikki to get their opinions on the series and the Redial OVA.
Overclockers/8Pack Builds: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=43&catid=2474&subid=2642
The Last of Us Live Update Notes: http://community.us.playstation.com/t5/The-Last-of-Us-Multiplayer/Live-Update-to-Multiplayer/m-p/41533903#U41533903
Profiles:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Resiam
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Resiam
PSN Profiles: http://www.psnprofiles.com/Resiam
05/09/2013 - The Last of Us and Demon's Souls
Today has been a good day for gaming, particularly for trophies in the case of Demon's Souls. In truth, I was actually hoping to watch some anime today but instead figured I should probably put some effort in to finishing The Last of Us.
If I remember correctly, I am currently on Week 6 Day 2 of my Hunter journey and getting more bored by the minute. I guess the consistent run of bad luck with joining matches when there is only one round left didn't help. But, it helped my clan of 115 people less since most of them are either now starving or sick. It should be easy to remedy though, by killing most of them off when I finish the current population challenge. I chose the gifting challenge this time for the first 100% risk challenge so I could faceroll my way through it without worrying too much. My plan for the 100% risk challenges this time around is Gifting - Gifting - Gifting - Downs and then Marks. That makes it pretty easy to finish up to tier 3 each time.
But enough about tedious and badly designed multiplayers, I went back to Demon's Souls! It's been sitting on my trophy list for several months now and I never got around to finishing it. This wasn't because I was bored or that I wasn't enjoying it. I left the disk in the UK when I moved to the Philippines... Whoops. Thankfully though, I think the fairies at PlayStation Plus must have heard my prayers though, since one month later it was free on the European PlayStation Store. Score!
For all you fans of Demon's Souls out there, this next bit should make perfect sense. Today I finished the following stages: 3-2, 3-3, 4-1, 4-2, 4-3 and 5-1. Not bad eh? I thought I did quite well considering how unforgiving this game is. Ignoring the various parodies on YouTube about the difficulty of the series, it does chew you up, spit you back out, stamp on you, set fire to you, vomit on you and then launch you through another dimension of pain. But it's fun... Right..? Please agree with me...
I think tomorrow will spent either playing more video games or watching One Piece with my girlfriend. I have such a large variety of hobbies in my life. She's playing catchup to me at the moment considering that we're on episode 175 and I'm on episode 608. Not far to go.
Any opinions on what I should play next? I have a fair few choices, one of which is GTA V. The truth is that with the amount of effort I'm putting in to finishing TLOU, it's going to take me until the release date to finish it.
Remember to leave a comment, share and/or subscribe to my blog. Mirai Nikki review is not entirely finished yet as I'm not convinced on the quality. Look forward to it though!
Profiles:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Resiam
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Resiam
PSN Profiles: http://www.psnprofiles.com/Resiam
If I remember correctly, I am currently on Week 6 Day 2 of my Hunter journey and getting more bored by the minute. I guess the consistent run of bad luck with joining matches when there is only one round left didn't help. But, it helped my clan of 115 people less since most of them are either now starving or sick. It should be easy to remedy though, by killing most of them off when I finish the current population challenge. I chose the gifting challenge this time for the first 100% risk challenge so I could faceroll my way through it without worrying too much. My plan for the 100% risk challenges this time around is Gifting - Gifting - Gifting - Downs and then Marks. That makes it pretty easy to finish up to tier 3 each time.
But enough about tedious and badly designed multiplayers, I went back to Demon's Souls! It's been sitting on my trophy list for several months now and I never got around to finishing it. This wasn't because I was bored or that I wasn't enjoying it. I left the disk in the UK when I moved to the Philippines... Whoops. Thankfully though, I think the fairies at PlayStation Plus must have heard my prayers though, since one month later it was free on the European PlayStation Store. Score!
For all you fans of Demon's Souls out there, this next bit should make perfect sense. Today I finished the following stages: 3-2, 3-3, 4-1, 4-2, 4-3 and 5-1. Not bad eh? I thought I did quite well considering how unforgiving this game is. Ignoring the various parodies on YouTube about the difficulty of the series, it does chew you up, spit you back out, stamp on you, set fire to you, vomit on you and then launch you through another dimension of pain. But it's fun... Right..? Please agree with me...
I think tomorrow will spent either playing more video games or watching One Piece with my girlfriend. I have such a large variety of hobbies in my life. She's playing catchup to me at the moment considering that we're on episode 175 and I'm on episode 608. Not far to go.
Any opinions on what I should play next? I have a fair few choices, one of which is GTA V. The truth is that with the amount of effort I'm putting in to finishing TLOU, it's going to take me until the release date to finish it.
Remember to leave a comment, share and/or subscribe to my blog. Mirai Nikki review is not entirely finished yet as I'm not convinced on the quality. Look forward to it though!
Profiles:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Resiam
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Resiam
PSN Profiles: http://www.psnprofiles.com/Resiam
Thursday, 5 September 2013
04/09/2013 - Finished Mirai Nikki and The Last of Us Multiplayer
So it happened... I finished Future Diary. I can't say that it's a good thing either since I was really enjoying it. But I'm glad I didn't have to wait two years for the 'Redial' OVA, unlike the people who originally watched the series did. That must have really sucked.
Since the series is now finished, I guess I'll be doing my first anime series review tomorrow. That should be interesting since it will probably take a long time to write/proofread. The next series I'll be watching will most likely be Bamboo Blade, that said I also have Cowboy Bebop on standby as well.
As the post title states, I also did some TLOU multiplayer today, getting up to Week 4, Day 2 of my second journey. The sad part is that it has by far been the most infuriating day ever since I started playing the multiplayer. No less than five times was I kicked from the game at the end of the match when a team had won/lost. I lost approximately 22000 parts and five days of progression. It gets more annoying when you calculate it further as I might have to play the multiplayer for an extra hour. The sensation of rage is similar to that which you feel when you die in a Final Fantasy after not having saved it for the entire area. AAAARRRGGGGHHH!
Still I guess I can't complain, at least the game has given me my moneys worth, even if it was sort of a crappy way of going about it.
Oh and there was a live multiplayer patch released for The Last of Us today in an attempt to make the matches fairer. You can guess the impact it had, almost zero. I think another think that the phrase 'almost zero' can be attributed to is the number of times Naughty Dog has acknlowedged that they have failed.
I need to focus intensely on finishing TLOU so I can get around to playing Kingdom Hearts HD and One Piece Pirate Warriors... I'm pretty bored of Fireflys and Hunters. Oh and molotovs, can't forget the molotovs.
Sadly I don't have any more updates on my PC as I still don't have the finance to finish the entire build. Of course the disaster that occured only a few hours ago involving the chemical explosions that engulfed two of the Hynix plants also put a damper on that project, as they are some of the biggest manufacturers of DDRM on the planet. I'm not sure how much of an impact it will have on the end-consumer, but I highly doubt it will be positive.
That's all for the evening guys. Don't forget to subscribe to the thread and follow my profiles. You might have noticed I also added a gallery page, feel free to check it out whenever you read these posts!
Profiles:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Resiam
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Resiam
PSN Profiles: http://www.psnprofiles.com/Resiam
Since the series is now finished, I guess I'll be doing my first anime series review tomorrow. That should be interesting since it will probably take a long time to write/proofread. The next series I'll be watching will most likely be Bamboo Blade, that said I also have Cowboy Bebop on standby as well.
As the post title states, I also did some TLOU multiplayer today, getting up to Week 4, Day 2 of my second journey. The sad part is that it has by far been the most infuriating day ever since I started playing the multiplayer. No less than five times was I kicked from the game at the end of the match when a team had won/lost. I lost approximately 22000 parts and five days of progression. It gets more annoying when you calculate it further as I might have to play the multiplayer for an extra hour. The sensation of rage is similar to that which you feel when you die in a Final Fantasy after not having saved it for the entire area. AAAARRRGGGGHHH!
Still I guess I can't complain, at least the game has given me my moneys worth, even if it was sort of a crappy way of going about it.
Oh and there was a live multiplayer patch released for The Last of Us today in an attempt to make the matches fairer. You can guess the impact it had, almost zero. I think another think that the phrase 'almost zero' can be attributed to is the number of times Naughty Dog has acknlowedged that they have failed.
I need to focus intensely on finishing TLOU so I can get around to playing Kingdom Hearts HD and One Piece Pirate Warriors... I'm pretty bored of Fireflys and Hunters. Oh and molotovs, can't forget the molotovs.
Sadly I don't have any more updates on my PC as I still don't have the finance to finish the entire build. Of course the disaster that occured only a few hours ago involving the chemical explosions that engulfed two of the Hynix plants also put a damper on that project, as they are some of the biggest manufacturers of DDRM on the planet. I'm not sure how much of an impact it will have on the end-consumer, but I highly doubt it will be positive.
That's all for the evening guys. Don't forget to subscribe to the thread and follow my profiles. You might have noticed I also added a gallery page, feel free to check it out whenever you read these posts!
Profiles:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Resiam
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Resiam
PSN Profiles: http://www.psnprofiles.com/Resiam
Tuesday, 3 September 2013
03/09/2013 - Mirai Nikki Marathon!
I said I would do it, and I did. Although it's not quite on the level of my 25 episode a day One Piece marathons, 9 episodes in a row is sort of intense. It was mixed with shopping for PC components (which turned out to suck more than I expected) but I'm still proud! I should be proud... right?
I made the mistake of thinking I was starting to understand this anime, but no, it just keeps getting weirder.
Warning: Spoilers
I pretty much expected the Fourth to turn out to be a douche, although he did have a decent motive to want to become God. The Ninth is also starting to grow on me as a character, even though she's a globally known terrorist. But, with only seven episodes left in the series there aren't many characters left to be revealed, and not many more that are still alive.
It's nice to see that Yuno's character is starting to develop a bit more, even if she is just getting more and more psychotic with each episode. The imprisonment part with Yuuki was weird even for her, and the whole booby-trapping the entire Hotel was crazy. Credit to the author who came up with the pickaxe in the elevator idea though, that surprised me.
Still, Akise is also proving to be an interesting character, but I think he's a bit too intelligent for his age. He reminds me a bit of Light from the Death Note series, just slightly less insane.
I also have to give credit to Yuuki. While I'm not a fan of main characters that are slightly pathetic - see Haruyuki in Accel World - he's doing well to have not lost his mind after the amount he has been through, I think I would have given up by that point.
The good thing about the plot of Mirai Nikki is that it keeps you on edge most of the time since you never know which Diary Owner is going to turn up and what kind of ridiculous power his Diary will present him with. The Seventh's Diaries were cool, albeit pretty cheesy and I quite like the Ninth's Escape Diary as well.
I'm aiming to finish the series tomorrow if my time allows me, but it might take a few more days yet, so you guys will need to wait patiently for the series review! No spoilers, I really want to enjoy this series. Especially considering I've managed to avoid using a Wiki to answer something I've been curious about, instead of waiting for something to actually happen.
In terms of PC component hunting, I tried selecting some websites that offer international shipping, only to be shot down by all of them. Tigers Direct wanted $500 for shipping and using Amazon would mean that I would need to pay $300 in import taxes. No thanks.
Well that's all for tonight, I really need to sleep. Hopefully the stupidly loud thunder won't wake me up.
Profiles:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Resiam
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Resiam
PSN Profiles: http://www.psnprofiles.com/Resiam
I made the mistake of thinking I was starting to understand this anime, but no, it just keeps getting weirder.
Warning: Spoilers
I pretty much expected the Fourth to turn out to be a douche, although he did have a decent motive to want to become God. The Ninth is also starting to grow on me as a character, even though she's a globally known terrorist. But, with only seven episodes left in the series there aren't many characters left to be revealed, and not many more that are still alive.
It's nice to see that Yuno's character is starting to develop a bit more, even if she is just getting more and more psychotic with each episode. The imprisonment part with Yuuki was weird even for her, and the whole booby-trapping the entire Hotel was crazy. Credit to the author who came up with the pickaxe in the elevator idea though, that surprised me.
Still, Akise is also proving to be an interesting character, but I think he's a bit too intelligent for his age. He reminds me a bit of Light from the Death Note series, just slightly less insane.
I also have to give credit to Yuuki. While I'm not a fan of main characters that are slightly pathetic - see Haruyuki in Accel World - he's doing well to have not lost his mind after the amount he has been through, I think I would have given up by that point.
The good thing about the plot of Mirai Nikki is that it keeps you on edge most of the time since you never know which Diary Owner is going to turn up and what kind of ridiculous power his Diary will present him with. The Seventh's Diaries were cool, albeit pretty cheesy and I quite like the Ninth's Escape Diary as well.
I'm aiming to finish the series tomorrow if my time allows me, but it might take a few more days yet, so you guys will need to wait patiently for the series review! No spoilers, I really want to enjoy this series. Especially considering I've managed to avoid using a Wiki to answer something I've been curious about, instead of waiting for something to actually happen.
In terms of PC component hunting, I tried selecting some websites that offer international shipping, only to be shot down by all of them. Tigers Direct wanted $500 for shipping and using Amazon would mean that I would need to pay $300 in import taxes. No thanks.
Well that's all for tonight, I really need to sleep. Hopefully the stupidly loud thunder won't wake me up.
Profiles:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Resiam
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Resiam
PSN Profiles: http://www.psnprofiles.com/Resiam
Monday, 2 September 2013
02/09/2013 - The Last of Us Multiplayer and PC Stuff.
I'm sure that with the interesting post title, your eyes are mainly focused on the latter section. The truth is today, I've had to spend time in that game with excellent graphics... No, not The Last of Us... Real life.
In terms of the multiplayer gaming (on TLOU, obviously) I'm about to start the third week of my Hunter journey, but I'm already bored. I genuinely struggle to understand why people are playing this game up to and over 100 weeks survived. The multiplayer modes are really restricted, even with the additional 'Interrogation' mode. But, like most other people, I struggle to understand why people CoD (Cesspool of Depression), so they probably have a good reason. I do however get some amusing kills which make the whole time playing worth it. Today's example would be killing the entire team with a Molotov while they were huddled around a toolbox... -insert evil laugh here-
I am also aware that if I wanted to I could speed up the process of finishing the Hunter journey, but I do not believe in spoiling other people's gameplay experiences for an e-peen boost... We all know how annoying it is when someone joins the game and then instantly leaves resulting in 3v4 or sometimes 2v4. Not funny.
What is slightly saddening about today is that I did not get to watch any more Mirai Nikki. Damn visa renewals!
While typing this, I am trying to work out what I have to look forward to in the next month or so... I guess building my new PC should be interesting, as well as the possibility of doing some maintenance for an upcoming internet café. Tinkering with PCs is probably my favourite thing to do after gaming and anime.
A bit more about my new rig. It'll be based on an Intel i5 4670K running with an AIO liquid cooling solution (custom loop is a bit expensive at the moment). The fans will be replaced with Corsair SP/AF 120 Quiet Editions and it will most likely be using either a nVidia GTX 770 or an ATI Radeon HD 7970. I haven't decided which yet though. Unfortunately, getting high-end PC components in the Philippines is like getting blood from a stone without smashing it into a TipidPC admins head. It's even worse if you don't happen to live in Cebu or Manila since they decide to extort obtuse delivery fees from you. But, oh well. One peripheral I really have my eye on is the new SteelSeries Siberia Elite that they have been showcasing at PAX 2013. It looks like you can have a sponge on either side of your ear. I'll put some links at the bottom of this post.
Well that's all that happened today, sorry it isn't very long or interesting. I'll try to be slightly more inspiring tomorrow!
Feel free to discuss this article in any way, shape or form that you see fit. Don't forget to share this article on anywhere you like or contact me directly with any opinions you think relevant.
My final question to you guys is.... Is anyone buying Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD Remix tomorrow? Do you fancy buying me a copy? >.>
Bye!
SteelSeries Siberia Elite Links:
Official Site: http://steelseries.com/siberiaelite
NCIX.com Hands on Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPAMmsEJGGQ
Profiles:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Resiam
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Resiam
PSN Profiles: http://www.psnprofiles.com/Resiam
In terms of the multiplayer gaming (on TLOU, obviously) I'm about to start the third week of my Hunter journey, but I'm already bored. I genuinely struggle to understand why people are playing this game up to and over 100 weeks survived. The multiplayer modes are really restricted, even with the additional 'Interrogation' mode. But, like most other people, I struggle to understand why people CoD (Cesspool of Depression), so they probably have a good reason. I do however get some amusing kills which make the whole time playing worth it. Today's example would be killing the entire team with a Molotov while they were huddled around a toolbox... -insert evil laugh here-
I am also aware that if I wanted to I could speed up the process of finishing the Hunter journey, but I do not believe in spoiling other people's gameplay experiences for an e-peen boost... We all know how annoying it is when someone joins the game and then instantly leaves resulting in 3v4 or sometimes 2v4. Not funny.
What is slightly saddening about today is that I did not get to watch any more Mirai Nikki. Damn visa renewals!
While typing this, I am trying to work out what I have to look forward to in the next month or so... I guess building my new PC should be interesting, as well as the possibility of doing some maintenance for an upcoming internet café. Tinkering with PCs is probably my favourite thing to do after gaming and anime.
A bit more about my new rig. It'll be based on an Intel i5 4670K running with an AIO liquid cooling solution (custom loop is a bit expensive at the moment). The fans will be replaced with Corsair SP/AF 120 Quiet Editions and it will most likely be using either a nVidia GTX 770 or an ATI Radeon HD 7970. I haven't decided which yet though. Unfortunately, getting high-end PC components in the Philippines is like getting blood from a stone without smashing it into a TipidPC admins head. It's even worse if you don't happen to live in Cebu or Manila since they decide to extort obtuse delivery fees from you. But, oh well. One peripheral I really have my eye on is the new SteelSeries Siberia Elite that they have been showcasing at PAX 2013. It looks like you can have a sponge on either side of your ear. I'll put some links at the bottom of this post.
Well that's all that happened today, sorry it isn't very long or interesting. I'll try to be slightly more inspiring tomorrow!
Feel free to discuss this article in any way, shape or form that you see fit. Don't forget to share this article on anywhere you like or contact me directly with any opinions you think relevant.
My final question to you guys is.... Is anyone buying Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD Remix tomorrow? Do you fancy buying me a copy? >.>
Bye!
SteelSeries Siberia Elite Links:
Official Site: http://steelseries.com/siberiaelite
NCIX.com Hands on Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPAMmsEJGGQ
Profiles:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Resiam
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Resiam
PSN Profiles: http://www.psnprofiles.com/Resiam
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)