Video Game Log

Some friends and I were talking about which games we have today and which games we own that we have left to beat.  A couple of us decided that our backlogs were so large it would just be easier to make a list.  I've been totally lacking on blog posts after not posting a single thing last month, so I figured I'd post mine here.  Anyway, here it goes.

Games completed this year:
- New Super Mario Bros 2 (Regular Mario game, nothing special but still fun)
- Kingdom Hearts 3D (Possibly my least favorite KH game, mainly because of the terrible story) 
- Kid Icarus: Uprising (Loved the music and overall presentation, bogged down by sloppy controls)
- Psychonauts (Very interesting game, great concept although gameplay was a little choppy)
- Sonic Adventure 2 HD (Still one of my favorite games ever)
- Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2 (Better engine than episode 1, poor level design, combo moves with Tails could essentially break the game)
- Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Some of the hidden star missions were ridiculously frustrating, but not too bad of a game)
- Ghost Trick (Best story I've read in years, loved this game)
- Back to the Future: The Game (Thoroughly enjoyed it, I wish this game got more attention than it did)
- Braid (Fun to play, but I didn't bother with finding the hidden stars)

 Games I currently own that I haven't beat:
- Black Mesa Source (What I played of it was fun, but I'm not a big fan of FPS's in the first place)
- NiGHTS into dreams HD (I get the feeling this game hasn't aged very well...)
- Space Channel 5: Part 2 (Just got this one, haven't had much time to play it yet)
- Jet Set Radio (The controls make this game frustrating as hell, I don't know why everyone who's played this game likes it so much, although maybe it's just because I have the PS3 version.)
- Jak II (watch a cutscene, do an aggravating mission, watch a cutscene, do an aggravating mission, etc...)
- From Dust (cool idea but pretty dull in practice)
- inFAMOUS (fun to play, but sort of grimdark and edgy)
- Katawa Shoujo (got through act 1, lost interest)
- Eternal Sonata (FREAKING TUBA)
- Final Fantasy XIII (MORE LIKE FINAL HALLWAY XIII, AMIRITE?)
- Tales of Graces f (sort of trying to save this one to play with friends)
- New Super Mario Bros Wii U (See Tales of Graces f)
 

Professor Messer

Hey everyone, just thought I'd give you guys a quick update on what I've been up to.  First off I finally got a job at the local movie theater, so that's cool.  On the downside that also means that my blog updates will probably be even less frequent now. ><

In other news, I've recently been studying for the CompTIA A+ exam which is basically for a certificate that says you're proficient at computer technician work.  While doing research I stumbled upon a great series of videos I thought I'd share with you guys by a guy who calls himself Professor Messer.  If you're interested you can check out his free videos at http://www.professormesser.com.  Here's a quick sample of one of his videos:



I think he does a pretty good job teaching, and he's really easy to understand, which I like. So yeah... That's all for now.

Fall 2012 Anime Line-up

It's that time again.  Time for my thoughts on the Fall 2012 anime line-up.  Click the following thumbnail for a link to the full-sized image:

Hayate, Gintama, Hidamari Sketch:  All sequels to anime I've heard are pretty good.  Especially Gintama.  Unfortunately I haven't watched any of them so if I want to watch these I should probably go back and watch the first seasons.

Bakuman Season 3:  I watched the first season, that was a bad move.  Not terrible, but pretty boring.

Little Busters!:  I have high hopes for this one.  For those unfamiliar with the title, it was originally a visual novel by Key, the makers of Air, Kanon, and Clannad, but unlike those three, this adaptation is being done by JC Staff instead of Kyoto Animation.  Pretty disappointing, but hey, I'm not giving up hope yet.

Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo:  Looks sort of interesting.  I think I'll wait to see what the reviewers say before picking this one up though.

Robotics;Notes:  Ooooh snap!  Another anime by the makers of Chaos;Head and Stein's;Gate!  Hopefully it follows in the footsteps of the later and not the former...

Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai!:  What Kyoani is picking up this season instead of Little Busters.  Hopefully better than what they had last time around...

BTOOOM!:  More MMO mishaps?  Oh well, sounds good to me.  I'll check this one out.

Aoi Sekai no Chuushin de:  And last, but hopefully not least, the anime I'm most excited for.  An anime based off the age-old rivalry of Sega versus Nintendo.  Sounds silly, no?  But hey, the main character is based off of Sonic the Hedgehog.  Can't get any cooler than that in my book.

Video Game Review: Kingdom Hearts 3D

Kingdom Hearts II is my favorite video game of all time. That being said, I always go into Kingdom Hearts Games with high expectations. Kingdom Hearts 3D continues the on-going story of Sora, protector of light, in his fight against Xehonort, bringer of darkness.

This time Riku's along for the ride as well as the second playable character in the game. In order to utilize both characters, the game implements a "drop" system in which the player can only play as one character for a certain amount of time before automatically being "dropped" and switched to the other character. While an interesting change from the typical "go to the menu to switch characters," the drop system can be a bit inconvenient at times, particularly in the middle of boss battles where if you don't defeat the boss by the time your drop meter runs out you'll have to start the battle all over again.

Now did I mention there are Disney characters in this game? No? That's because there aren't many. Well, comparatively at least. There were only five Disney worlds in this game compared to the six+ in other portable games in the series, and only three of them introduced some new characters. Sort of disappointing.

Gameplay-wise the game was great, perhaps one of the best in the series, although I did miss the crazy 10-hit combos from games like Kingdom Hearts II and 358/2 Days. The music was good, particularly in the Fantasia world which essentially used music directly from the movie of the same name. The game is also graphically impressive, looking even better than Kingdom Hearts II.

But I do feel that in a JRPG the story is particularly important, and that's where I was the most disappointed with this game. Basically the whole game is Sora and Riku taking the "Mark of Mastery Exam" by traveling inside the seven sleeping worlds and waking them up by defeating the "Dream Eaters" inside of them. This would have been okay if each of the worlds had some interesting content, but the only ones I really found interesting were the Tron world, the Pinocchio world, and the Hunchback of Notre Dame world. And don't even get me started on the ending.

Highlight the following for spoilers:
There were four ending bosses. One for Sora and three for Riku. The hardest one is the second battle with Riku. The two remaining after that are easy, and really leave you feeling like you didn't accomplish much in the end. I honestly was shocked with how anti-climatic the final battle was compared to the ones in the rest of the series. And the secret ending for the game was just terrible. Kairi can wield a keyblade?! No waaaay~! We only learned that way back in Kingdom Hearts II...

So to sum it up, great gameplay, poor story. Since gameplay is always the most important thing when it comes to a video game I'll give it a bit of a score boost. Kingdom Hearts 3D gets a 7/10.

First Impressions: Sword Art Online

Okay, so this anime is pretty cool so far. It's a lot like .Hack, but better. At least better than the anime. The games were great. So in the first episode, a guy logs into new virtual reality game Sword Art Online and meets some other guy who asks him to teach him the ropes since main character guy was a beta tester. This MMORPG stuff fits in perfectly with all the GW2 I've been playing lately, haha.

After a little bit of training, the characters soon learn that the Game Master has trapped everyone inside the game and the only way to escape is for them to complete it. It may sound a little cliche since it's been done before, but the presentation is excellent so far. Anyway, hope it stays this good. About 10 episodes are out so far, and I'm only on episode 3, so I have quite a bit of catching up to do.

Phoenix Wright 5

This just in - A new Ace Attorney game is on the horizon and Phoenix is back! Details released about the game thus far are as follows:

- For the Nintendo 3DS
- New girl sidekick (I'm gonna miss Maya...)
- Set one year after Apollo Justice
- It will be in 3D

I haven't played an Ace Attorney game since Trials and Tribulations, but I'm pretty excited. Now I'm gonna have to go back and play Apollo Justice and the Edgeworth game to see what I missed...

Guild Wars 2

As no doubt a lot of you know, Guild Wars 2 was released this week and it has quickly become one of the most popular MMO's of all time. Since I've been playing a lot of it this week I figured I'd take this opportunity to show off my character.

I'm only a level 7 elementalist right now, but hopefully that will improve in due time. So do any of you guys play? If you want to add me to your friend list my name is Content Hedgehog (of course) and I play on the Ferguson's Crossing server. Hope to see you in-game!

P.S. Glad to hear I'm not the only blogger who's a fan of Game Grumps. :D

Man, sorry for the lack of updates this month

I've had some bad writer's block recently. Plus I haven't watched any movies, finished any anime, or beat any games, so I haven't been able to write any reviews either. I have, on the other hand, been watching a lot of these videos:



I don't know why I keep watching them. It's basically two guys just dicking around while playing video games, but it's so addicting. So yeah, hopefully the next post will be a little more substantial. Content Hedgehog, out.

Anime Review: Sankarea

This anime... so much wasted potential... The entire anime they made it seem like they were leading up to something but then nothing happened. I will say that the anime was based off a manga which is still in production, so I understand that as long as they were going by the source they couldn't have had a definitive ending, but still I wish it did.

Anyone remember the blog post where I first introduced this anime? I'll continue where I left off from there. Anyway, the girl ends up turning into a zombie and basically all of the main character guy's wishes come true. Except he doesn't do anything about it because he's a pansy.

About half way through the anime they start hinting at something deeper, most notably that the zombie girl has a taste for blood. They could have done so much with this! She could have turned against the main character, or she could have gone on a rampage and the main character could have had to stop her, but no! Nothing happens!

As the series goes on there's a lot of forced drama involving the girl and her parents. Some of it is kind of interesting, and it actually has you wanting to know what happens next most of the time. Unfortunately if you're anything like me your expectations will be dashed and you'll be left with a disappointing ending. So that sums up what I thought about the story. Animation-wise it was okay. Nothing special. Sound, characters... meh. I give Sankarea a 6/10.

Getting back to the 30 Day Drawing Challenge: Day 18

Day 18: Just a Doodle

Hey, remember when this was a thing? Yeah, me neither. Anyway, I couldn't think of anything to draw for this one, so I asked my girlfriend and she told me to draw a park. So here it is, a doodle of a park. Although I'm not sure this qualifies as a doodle...

Anime Review: Stein's;Gate

This anime actually started out a little slow, so I dropped it after a couple episodes back when it was first airing, but then I decided to pick it up again after hearing the praise it was getting, and boy am I glad I did. Stein's Gate is a masterpiece about a young MAD SCIENTIST who invents a time machine out of a phone and a microwave with the help of a fat, otaku hacker and a cool tsundere chick. Also there are some other characters. Doododoo~


This is one of those anime where you simply can't stop watching. You're on the edge of your seat at the end of each episode and you keep wanting to know what happens next. Although the pacing is slow at first, it picks up fast once the time machine is used the first time. From there on the show just gets better and better.

The artwork is great. The animation, while not entirely fluid, fits the mood perfectly. The voices and music all fit excellently as well. There were probably a few plot holes as there are in any story involving time travel, but nothing really stood out to me. I don't think I could have asked for a better ending, and I'm anxiously looking forward to the movie announced at the end of the series' TV broadcast. I give Steins;Gate a 9.5/10.

Oh, and one more thing. The main character drinks Dr. Pepper.

Toonstruck

Continuing the trend of talking about games that no one has ever heard of, I'd like to tell you all about Toonstruck, a point-and-click adventure game released in 1996. My girlfriend and I finally finished this game a little while ago after playing it for several weeks. Pretty long for a non-episodic point-and-click game.

I stumbled upon this gem a couple months ago while online looking up different adventure games to play. The description for the game sounded interesting enough, then I read the casting roles. Christopher Lloyd, Dan Castellaneta, Tim Curry, Jeff Bennett, Dom DeLuise, AND Jim Cummings!? Why hadn't I heard of this game before???

Needless to say I had to start this game right away. I told my girlfriend about it and she was interested too, so we decided to play it together. We started up the game one night and boy, lemme tell ya, nothing is greater than Doc from Back to the Future complaining about pink fluffy animated bunnies.


...Off to a good start. As we played I starting noticing popular 90's cartoon voice actors left and right. It was amazing. The guard from Aladdin as a frog who works at a bakery, the cat from American Tail as a sarcastic octopus, Johnny Bravo as an extremely flamboyant "carecrow," NIGEL THORNBERRY AS THE MOST EVIL CARTOON CHARACTER OF ALL TIME! This game was amazing. Then this happened.


...What more can I say? If you're a big fan of 90's cartoons and you like parodies, you need to play this game.

The Wii U Experience

So as many of you know Comic-Con was this last weekend and although I only attended day four of the convention, I was busy down in San Diego all four nights. Thursday night was the Legend of Zelda Symphony of the Goddesses where they played various musical pieces from the Legend of Zelda video game series. Friday was Sonic Boom, a showcase/concert for the latest in Sonic the Hedgehog. Saturday I was able to attend an exclusive Nintendo Wii U showcase that I'll come back to in a minute, and Sunday was Comic-Con.

Merchandising at Comic-Con wasn't very good this year in my opinion. The only thing I ended up purchasing was a figurine of Winry from the anime Fullmetal Alchemist. Anyway, I think the highlight of the trip was the Nintendo Wii U Experience, so I'd like to take a little time to talk about that.

A couple weeks ago I received an email from Nintendo saying that I was invited to come try out the Nintendo Wii U at Comic-Con. At first I figured it was some mass invite that everyone signed up for Nintendo's newsletter received, but apparently it was only for dedicated Club Nintendo members. Anyway, when my girlfriend and I got there on Saturday, we were greeted by several not-yet-released Wii U games, very short lines, and free legos (apparently they helped sponsor the event).

Wii U games available for play included:
- 4 different Nintendo Land minigames
- Rayman Legends
- Game & Wario
- Pikmin 3
- Scribblenauts Unlimited
- ZombiU
- New Super Mario Bros Wii U
- Wii Fit U

So yeah, it was pretty awesome. The only games I didn't get around to playing were ZombiU and WiiFit U, and that's mainly because I didn't really have any interest in playing them. Anyway, I think my favorite was either Scribblenauts or Rayman. I'm really looking forward to the Wii U now, and I'm totally going to get one once they're released. If anyone has any questions related to these games let me know. I might write more about them in a later post.

Ports and Remakes

Boy, a whole mess of remakes/ports have been announced recently. The ones I'm sort of interested in are...

Dragonball Z Budokai HD Collection - Includes HD versions of DBZ Budokai 1 and 3. Budokai 1 had the best story mode out of any DBZ game ever, and I never got the chance to play Budokai 3 back when it first came out, so that should be fun.

Kirby's Dream Collection - Compilation of Kirby's Dream Land 1-3, Kirby's Adventure, Kirby Super Star, and Kirby 64. I've played most of these already, but it might be nice to have them all on one convenient Wii disc.

...and most importantly,
Nights into Dreams - I never had the chance to play this one since I never owned a Sega Saturn, but I've always wanted to. Now I get to play it in HD on the PS3. I can't wait.

Other recently announced games I'm looking forward to include Tales of Xilla (a North American release was finally announced) and Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 3. Hopefully we'll get even more good video game news out of San Diego Comic-con this weekend.

Summer 2012 Anime Line-up

Busy as usual lately. Right, well you guys should know the routine by now. Here are my thoughts on the Summer 2012 anime line-up.

Sword Art Online - I'm always interested in anime that incorporate video games. Hopefully this one will be less disappointing than what I saw of Accel World.

Kono Naka ni Hitori - Generic fanservice.

Tari Tari - I like the art style...

Binbougami Ga - Happiness Energy? I miiiight look into this one...

... Wow, that's honestly I'll I'm really interested in. Welp, I guess this will be a good chance to catch up on my backlog. If I ever stop being busy that is. @_@

Movie Review: Brave

Not the best Pixar film, but still pretty good. Brave is about a young Scottish girl named Merida who is upset with her mom who wants to marry her off to one of these three guys she doesn't like. After the two get into a fight, Merida runs off into the forest and stumbles upon a witch's hut. She pays the witch for a potion that she hopes will change her mom for the better. Instead it changes her into a bear.

The plot... not terribly generic, although once you got the gist of the story down it was pretty easy to see where it was heading. The characters were alright. Not as original or memorable of some of Pixar's other characters, but still pretty likable. The soundtrack was pretty great, one of the movie's strong points aside from fantastic-as-usual animation.

That being said, I was also disappointed with a couple things in this movie. First off, although they picked a beautiful location for the setting of the movie, they hardly took advantage of it. Most of the movie it seemed like you were looking at the inside of an extremely bland castle, even though there were sparkling waterfalls and majestic mountains just outside.

The second thing was that the movie had no real antagonist. Is it just me or are the Pixar films with actual set-in-stone antagonists always better? Toy Story had Sid, A Bugs Life had Hopper, Monsters Inc. had... that purple lizard guy. This movie just had... the mom I guess? Except you were kind of supposed to like the mom, and the mom was good most of the time, and... I don't even know.

If you like films like these I say give it a go. It's enjoyable and pretty well made. If you usually don't like films like these I doubt this will be any exception seeing as though it's not particularly amazing or anything. I give Brave a 7.5/10. A good movie with a .5 bonus for a great soundtrack.

AM^2

Hey everyone, sorry I haven't updated in like a week. Not only have I been really busy, but my laptop charger randomly decided to crap out on me so I had to order a new one. Anyway, I went to the Anime, Manga, and Music convention with a group of friends during my blogging hiatus. This was only it's second year running, so it's still not a very big convention, but we had fun. My girlfriend and I bought three prints that I thought I'd show off to you guys. They're all by Deviant-artist finni, and they're all Pokemon prints.

Print #1 - PKMN: Water Starters


Print #2 - PKMN: Fire Starters


Print #3 - Flying Lessons


They were also selling one more in the set. We didn't get it, but I figured it's still worth showing off.
PKMN: Grass Starters

Movie Review: Prometheus

Prometheus... I went into this movie with low expectations. I'm usually not really into this kind of movie. Turns out this was no exception. Prometheus is about a group of people who board a spaceship in search of a group of aliens thought to be mankind's "engineers." When all was said and done, the results weren't quite what they expected.

So the plot was pretty interesting I guess, not really my thing. The characters... all pretty undeveloped and forgettable. I'm not even sure this movie had any music, just really loud sound effects. Those were pretty cool though. Also the special effects were really good. Probably my favorite part of the movie.

Let's see, anything else to say about this movie... It was pretty freaky. Went in expecting a sci-fi film with some mild thriller elements and it turned out to be a fairly gory horror/sci-fi movie. I wouldn't recommend watching this movie if you're susceptible to nightmares, it will probably induce them. So yeah, pretty bland aside from the special effects. I give Prometheus a 5/10.

Movie Review: Men in Black 3

You know, this was honestly my favorite Men in Black movie. The other ones were good, but they both had quirky characters like the skinny alien guys and the talking pug. I felt this one took itself a little more seriously, and I respect it for that.

Men in Black 3 is the third in a series of movies starring Will Smith as Agent J and Tommy Lee Jones as Agent K, two members of a top-secret government organization that hides the existence of aliens as well as dealing with extraterrestrial affairs. In this film, Agent J goes back in time to prevent Agent K from being killed.

This movie was pretty good. My only really complaint was with a certain inconsistency near the end of the film. Highlight over the following text with your mouse to view spoilers: In the scene where Agent J memorizes the attack pattern of Boris the Animal, then goes back in time to dodge his attack, it heals his wounds, completely conflicting with how the movie had already established time travel worked. When Agent J had originally gone back in time, his body stayed completely the same regardless of what time he went to. Now when he went back in time, his body healed because he went back to before he was hurt.

Despite this one flaw, the movie was still quite enjoyable and entertaining. Nothing special, but still good. I give Men in Black 3 a 7/10.

Wreck-It Ralph

Well, I was planning on talking about E3 this week, but seeing as though this year's E3 kinda sucked, I'm talking about this instead. Wreck-It Ralph is an upcoming Disney film about an old video game character who wants to improve his image. Here's a trailer for it that was just released today.



Holy crap, they used actual video game characters from real video games? DIIIISNEEEEEEEYYYY!!!!

But seriously, yes. So much yes. A Disney movie about video games that has Bowser and Dr. Eggman in it? I can't wait for this.

Video Game Review: Back to the Future: The Game

Honestly... This was quite possibly the best point-and-click adventure game I've ever played. Granted I haven't played too many point-and-click adventure games, I thought it was at least better than Sam and Max and the old Humongous Entertainment games. Don't get me wrong, Humongous Entertainment was amazing, but unfortunately all of their games were kid-oriented.

The story for this game went from so-so, to cool, to what!?, to downright amazing. It seemed like the story picked up after each episode and got more and more interesting. I suppose it helps that the game had an entire movie trilogy to play off of, but the developers really did a fantastic job of implementing a wonderful new story while stile incorporating most if not all of the important aspects from the movies.

In Back to the Future: The Game, you're joined by the same (mostly) lovable cast from the movies as well as a few new additions. The voice acting is beautifully done and they even use the same soundtrack from the movies. The graphics were... not the best, but the developers still did a really good job of working with what they had, I assume using the Telltale design kit to the fullest of their abilities. While most of the animation consisted of bits of dialogue between two or more characters, there were also a few pretty cool cutscenes involving the Time Traveling DeLorean.

Nothing changes from playthrough to playthrough so there's essentially no replay value unless you forgot certain parts or just want to see some parts over again for whatever reason. So that's my only real complaint with the game aside from the sub-par graphics which are extremely easy to look over. For that reason, I'd say this game is probably a rental, but I would still definitely recommend at least one playthrough to anyone who is even remotely interested in adventure games. I give Back to the Future: The Game an 8/10.

Movie Review: Chronicle

Another crazy movie. Chronicle is a fairly recent movie (2012) about a group of angsty teenagers who acquire telekinesis after stumbling upon a mysterious glowing rock underground. Some of them abuse their powers and things eventually get out of hand leading to some pretty bizarre results.

I'm still not quite sure what type of genre this was. Drama/action I guess? Sort of like a super hero movie, without the super hero. There wasn't much music in the movie, but there were a lot of crazy sound effects that were used pretty well and really helped add to the atmosphere. There were three main characters that were all pretty much douchebags, especially the "main" one.

The special effects were pretty cool, even if it was pretty obvious that they were special effects. I thought that the scenes where they flew around the sky were especially entertaining to watch. The plot... pretty good. Decent pacing, plenty of drama, kept you entertained. So yeah, I liked it. A little weird though. I give Chronicle a 7/10.

Movie Review: The Pirates! Band of Misfits

Not a bad kid's movie. Not a bad kid's movie at all. From the makers of Wallis and Gromit and Chicken Run comes clay-mation film The Pirates! Band of Misfits. The movie is about the Pirate Captain and his band of misfits who are down on their luck after a series of unsuccessful raids. After almost giving up hope, the Pirate Captain stumbles upon Charles Darwin during a raid and finds out that his fat parrot is actually a Dodo bird. The pirate, his crew, and Charles Darwin then face a number of wacky hijinks in attempt to get the glory and the gold.

The plot's not too bad for a kid's movie, certainly not on Pixar's level, but still well enough to compete with the likes of some other Disney films. The animators do an excellent job, so no complaints there. There were actually quite a few recognizable songs throughout the movie, nothing like most of the subtle background tracks and occasional top 20 songs you usually hear in movies nowadays.

Some of the characters were pretty clever, while others seemed extremely one-dimensional. One of the pirates was a woman dressed up as a man, and they never really built on that. It seemed like an unnecessary plot-point, but I guess it wasn't really a plot-point in the first place since it had nothing to do with the plot. But I digress, the three or four main characters had plenty of personality, so that was good.

Overall, it was pretty good. Not the best, but definitely not bad either. I give The Pirates! Band of Misfits a 7/10.

Glyde Sale

My favorite online video game and electronics retailer Glyde is having a $5 off sale until Friday. Simply enter the coupon code SUMMER5 during checkout and $5 will be deducted from your total. In order to take advantage of this deal I would like to buy a game, but I'm not sure which one to get. Maybe you guys can help me decide.

Choice #1: Psychonauts
I'm a big fan of platformers, and I've actually tried out this game before, but I didn't get very far. If I use the coupon code I can get this game for $8. It's a little old, but I've heard it's very good.

Choice #2: L.A. Noire
I've heard mixed reviews on this game, but a friend of mine told me it's a game I would probably like playing through at least once. It looks good, but this would be the most expensive of the three options coming out to $19 with the coupon code.

Choice #3: Demon's Souls
I'd like to try out either this game or Dark Souls, and since Dark Souls is newer and apparently improved, I've been leaning towards that. On the other hand, this game would only be $8.50 with the coupon code. Another great deal from the looks of it.

So there you have it. What do you guys think I should get? The sale doesn't end until Friday, so I have another couple of days to decide.

Video Game Review: Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2

You know... I was a little disappointed with this game. After seeing that they revamped the physics from Episode 1, I was pretty excited about it, but after it playing it it doesn't really feel like they changed much.

Sonic 4 basically has no story, at least none of any importance, so I'm not going to bother commenting on that. The gameplay is slightly enhanced from episode 1 so that you can no longer stick to the side of walls and rolling into a ball has increased momentum gain. Still not as fast as the good ol' days though.

The level design... seems a little lacking at times. It feels like there are a lot more gimmicks in this game than there were in episode 1, especially with the new Tails-buddy-up combo thing. The music has improved slightly in my opinion, and they threw out the horrible boss theme from the first game. In it's place is a pretty a couple of pretty cool up-beat music tracks.


The graphics look really nice, although I'm not sure I prefer the 3D models over the 2D ones from the first episode. But getting back to gameplay, it's not bad, just not all I had hoped for. I give Sonic 4: Episode 2 a 7/10.

Zurker Invite Referral Code

I don't know much about this, but I saw this image online and figured it couldn't hurt to sign up, so here you go. If you're interested, go ahead and use my referral code at the bottom of the image.


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

inMomentum

Has anyone here heard of this game? It's so crazy. The trippiest game I've played in quite some time. The object of inMomentum is to gain momentum, jump from panel to panel, and pick up these blue orb things. That's it. But it's actually really fun for some reason. It's hard to explain.


The game takes forever to get a feel for, I must have died at least 100 times now. But because of instant respawning, it's still fun. I definitely recommend this game to anyone who is into speed-based games. It's a shame it has such a tiny fan-base. InMomentum is available for the PC and can be purchased for $9.99 off of Steam.

Hyouka: First Impressions

The main character and his best friend are voiced by the same guys who did Okazaki and Sonohara? Really? Well, I guess that doesn't matter, those guys were awesome. So how was the first episode of Hyouka? The animation's what we've come to expect from KyoAni. Pretty great. The opening made my computer lag... Anyway, still not sure what this part was all about.

But overall, the first episode was pretty... well, boring. After waiting several weeks for this anime to air, I was honestly pretty disappointed. I've only watched the first couple episodes, but it doesn't really seem like it's going to get much better. It seems like there's a different mystery every episode, but the problem is there's no action. No real suspense. The entire second episode was about the gang trying to figure out why a certain library book was checked out in oddly similar intervals.

Borrriiiing...
But hey, I guess it could get better. This is Kyoto Animation we're talking about. Pretty much my favorite anime studio. On the other hand, it could be a huge flop. I guess only time will tell...

Sankarea - First Impressions

Okay, so this is that new zombie anime I mentioned during the Spring 2012 anime line-up post. The first episode certainly was... interesting? Let's do a little recap, shall we? Apparently it's about a guy who has a zombie fetish.

Okay, so this could be interesting. What happens next... Apparently the guy's cat died, so he wants to bring it back to life. He figures if he can bring it back to life, it will probably be a zombie, but he doesn't really care because he wants to see his cat alive again.

Hmm.. lovely...
So while attempting to resurrect his dead cat, he runs into a chick who's pissed off at the world because her rich parents don't understand her.

And the guy agrees that he won't tell anyone about her screaming into the well if she doesn't tell anyone about him trying to bring his dead cat back to life. Seems like a fair trade.

Anyway, we'll see how it goes from here. Like I said earlier, I am interested, so I guess I'll keep watching for now.

Movie Review: The Avengers

This movie. It was amazing. Everything I expected and more. The Avengers is about a group of Marvel super heroes who are brought together by Nick Fury(Samuel L. Jackson) when Thor's brother Loki threatens to unleash an army upon the Earth.

This is going to be a short review because I really don't have anything to criticize about this movie. Everything was pretty much perfect. The way the characters interacted, the background music, the filming, the magnificent mix of action and comedy, the way the plot advanced, everything!

The movie had a helluva lot of fanservice, but the good kind! Not the bad kind like in this image...

Anyway, my opinion may be a little biased, and if you're not into this sort of thing you're not into it, but this was quite possibly the best movie I have ever seen. 10/10.

P.S. Thanks to everyone who wished me well. I'm feeling a lot better now. :D

Tiny Update

Hey everyone, still feeling kinda sick, just thought I'd give you guys a little update. I was feeling a lot better on Thursday, so I decided to go to the midnight premier of the Avengers with some friends. Expect a review on that in the next couple days. Unfortunately, after the premier I felt like crap, so spent all day Friday resting up. Anywho, I'll try to keep up the blog posts over the next couple of weeks, but with Finals drawing nearer and a pile of homework loaded up from this last week of being sick I'm not making any guarentees. Content Hedgehog, out.

Crummy weekend...

Sorry I didn't update over the weekend, guys. I got sick and was in bed for pretty much two days straight. Hopefully I'll be all better within the next couple days though. In the mean time, here's a little video I took of a bird slamming its face into my bedroom window.

Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale

So some of you may have heard Sony is making a Super Smash Bros. clone with their own characters. This thing looks so much like Smash Bros I don't even. It's like they're not even trying to make it look the slightest bit different concept-wise.

But hey, if it ends up with all the characters from that "Michael" commercial Sony put out a while back, I'll be happy. I'd deinitely like to see a match-up between Sack boy and Lightning, or Snake and Chell...


The current character roster includes:
-Sweet Tooth
-Fat Princess
-Kratos
-Sly Cooper
-Radec
-Parappa the Rapper

So what are your thoughts? Who would you like to see appear in the game? Jak and Ratchet are probably a given...

Deciding what classes to take...

So I'm picking my classes for this Summer, but I'm not sure what I want to take. I'm still undecided on a major, but I'm leaning towards maybe film, editing, or animation. Out of the rather limited selection of Summer courses, I've narrowed it down to three different classes...

1. Animal Diversity - Has nothing to do with what I want to go into, but I need some type of biological science class for general ed in order to transfer and this was the most appealing one on the list. It was either this or wait until the fall semester to see if there's an open physiological psychology class.

2. Adobe Photoshop - I'm actually pretty decent with photoshop and certainly know how to use it, but it may be a requirement to get into some animation classes once I transfer, so I'm thinking about taking it just for my record...

3. Web Design - I forgot to mention, I'm also interested in online business. I guess that kinda goes hand-in-hand with starting up a blog to make some extra cash. Also a friend of mine might take this class with me.

So yeah, I can't take all three, but I might take up to two of them. What do you guys think I should go with?

HEAVY METAL, HA HA, FAAAANNNTASTIC!

This guy. SirRonLionHeart. He's so crazy. One of my favorite LPers ever. Here's his latest video:



If you go back and look at some of his older videos, you can see he actually used to be somewhat normal until his obsessive LPing and Chateau Romani drinking eventually drove him to become a crazed vampire man... of the night! HA HA!...

Let's Play Super Mario 64 - Episode 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz-fUhSf5vY&list=PL043253E227D5EF89&index=1&feature=plpp_video
Let's Play Super Mario 64 - Episode 20: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0z4B6NVxb0&feature=relmfu
Let's Play Super Mario 64 - Episode 100: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSKPkRVLfR8&feature=relmfu

Yeah. This guy's pretty awesome. Check him out. His Super Mario World videos are my favorite.

I've got a busy week ahead of me...

SO much going on this week. The biggest thing is that my professors decided to lay on a whole mess of homework this week, so I have two essays and like 5 other assignments, as well as an exam to study for... In addition to that, I also have to get my car's oil changed and house-sit for a friend at the end of the weekend.

I also told a couple friends I would get together with them over the next few days, so that will be fun, but also time consuming. And then on top of that I'd like to keep up on blogging, and maybe finally crank out Day 18 of the 30 Day Drawing Challenge one of these days.

So all that being said, I have a pretty big backlog of video games to play and movies and anime to watch that's only getting bigger, so that's fun. But hey, I have my priorities. Remember how I told you guys I'm going to three different conventions over the summer? I'm also helping a friend of mine plan a beach trip, I'm planning a trip to the San Diego Wild Animal Park (now called the Safari Park, but forget that) with my girlfriend, and I may even go to this Legend of Zelda Symphony they're having down in San Diego in July. So yeah... very busy.

I couldn't think of a picture to post, so here's a rabbit with a pancake on his head.

Anime Reivew: Mirai Nikki

Oh boy, haven't done an anime review in a while... Anyway, Mirai Nikki. This anime was so crazy. After the first few episodes it seemed like it was just going to be your typical sci-fi battle shonen anime that just happens to have a yandere chick in it. But then it gets weird. After the first few episodes, Mirai Nikki starts throwing twists at you left and right, and you start to have no idea what's going to happen next.

I suppose I should have started this out with a summary of the anime. Mirai Nikki is about 12 people who are all forced to fight to the death in order to become the god of a new world. Fighting to the death in a tournament seems to be a common theme as of late, no? Anywho, Mirai Nikki takes it a step further by throwing in these things called "Future Diaries" usually in the form of a cell phone that can tell you your future. The catch is, each diary owner can affect the other owners' future through certain actions. It's a little complicated.

Mirai Nikki, while mostly sticking to the psychological thriller genre, manages to also include mystery as well as a few horror elements, making the whole thing one helluva ride. The characters, aside from a few of the less important diary owners, are all very creative and they can be pretty awesome at times.

This couple was awesome
The animation was pretty good. Nothing too special, but it was still done pretty well. Nothing too memorable as far as the soundtrack goes, although they did use the shock horror sound effect a couple times, which was pretty hilarious. But what really determines an anime's greatness is in its story, and that's where this one shines. I give Mirai Nikki a 9/10.

Spring 2012 Anime

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More Video Game News

First off, I got a lot of good luck wishes for my speech in my last post, so I'd like to thank you guys for that. The speech was tonight, I think it went pretty well.

Now down to business. Apparently these are the new Trainers for Pokemon Black and White 2.

Is it just me, or do they look a little... dumb?

In other news, TERA Online, supposedly the first "true action combat" mmo, is going into open beta on April 20th. A video of the game can be found here: http://tera.enmasse.com/game-guide/what-is-tera. You can click here to sign up using the code "TERABETA": https://account.enmasse.com/?utm_source=tera&utm_medium=email&utm_content=account_text&utm_campaign=OB_Code.

Ni no Kuni, a JRPG by the same team that brought you the anime movies Spirited Away and Ponyo, just released an english trailer for the game set to release in the first quarter of 2013. That can be found here: http://gematsu.com/2012/04/ni-no-kuni-debut-english-trailer.

And lastly, the mash-up game made by two of my favorite developers and one of my ex-favorite developers has been announced as Project X Zone. This game stars popular characters from the Capcom, Namco Bandai, and Sega franchises in a strategy RPG, however I'm not all that thrilled about it since it probably won't be released outside of Japan. More info on that can be found here: http://gematsu.com/2012/04/capcom-x-sega-x-namco-bandai-crossover-announced-as-project-x-zone

Freaking Capcom...

So I don't really have all that much to blog about...

But this guy is awesome: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/upshot/saving-planet-one-crashed-ferrari-time-201951165.html

Yo dawg, we heard you like cars...
Also I'd like to thank everyone for the suggestions on what to do for my speech. Some of you guys had some really great ideas. I decided to go with showing the class a graph of my blog views over time for my visual aid, so it should turn out pretty good. So thanks again. Laterz.