The plants of intelligence

It’s potentially a bad sign that I’ve now just resorted to using whatever happens to be playing in foobar as a post title.

It’s been what I will laughingly refer to as a long time since my last post update, and as usual, I feel some obligation that I must update constantly. Perhaps I have to make up for the fact that my friends BIG MIKE and Adam never update theirs.

As usual, I’ve not really been up to much, nothing interesting has happened, I’ve simply been playing Borderlands a lot. I’ve now got a level 50 Roland, a level 18 Brick, and a level 6 Lilith/Mordecai. From what I’ve seen so far, I don’t like one character entirely more than the others. It’s sort of tough to explain, but in many games I find that there’s one character who often caters to everything I look for in a character. In Borderlands for example, in terms of aesthetics, I think Roland looks like the best character, he also suits my playstyle (I like to play support characters) and I usually have a preference for ARs and shotguns. Thing is, occasionally I really like revolvers, and Borderlands happens to have a wide selection of awesome ones. Anyway I digress, that’s all good, but Brick is the best character personality wise, followed by Mordecai and Roland. You might think it odd, but to me, a character’s personality is oddly important. By that I mean, mostly, what they scream.

By my logic, if you’re going to be playing as a character for an extended period of time, you want them to be roaring out something cool, yes? That’s the reason I play as Hoffman in Gears too. Also compare Ryu in NG2, where I’ve previously mentioned how the japanese dub sounds like 1000x better in combat, whereas the english dub guy sounds like he’s trying to blast out the biggest turd ever. Brick has cool “taunts” and so on, Mordecai has a hilarious death cry. Roland’s aren’t bad exactly, he’s just..stereotypically black. It’s sort of bizarre, when you look at Roland’s character, he’s an “ex Crimson Lance” hardened merc type, in the intro movie he’s like get that camera out of my face fool, but then when you start playing he’s all DAYUUUM BIOOOTCH. I like Brick more, he’s got great callouts, not to mention awesome “I’M GETTING IN A CAR” noises. Oh right, you can’t forget his Berserker noises which are fucking hilarious.

As good as Borderlands is, it’s not as good as I was expecting. It seems somewhat different to the 2007 version, here’s a list of things that were either implied to be in the game, or outright stated as being in the game that, to my knowledge, are not:

• Randomly generated dungeons/instances/doglegs
• Character enhancements (aka buying upgrades for your character to increase reload speed and so on, this seems to have been worked into the game with weapon profiec)
• Character unique missions (Roland looking for the brigadier, Lilith for the other Siren etc)

At least that’s all I can remember, I would’ve honestly liked if the characters were a little more balanced and well, unique. Lilith for example is broken in terms of PvP, she has a daze effect that basically equals auto-win. Not to mention phasewalk which makes her invisible. Roland’s turret is useless as it only fires in an arc in front of it, you can just stand behind it and completely negate the point of it. I was sort of hoping that the characters would have 3-5 skills they could use, but in-fact they only have one skill each. I think the talent trees could use a bit of re-working as well, Roland has a lot of relatively pointless talents, everyone does.

You know what else I would like? Something concrete to work for. Right now I’m basically just teleporting from zone to zone, killing everything and looking through the shops and chests to find some good stuff. Specifically, I’m looking for a revolver, a bloody unforgiven legendary (I think that’s the one) with 900 damage, crit damage bonus and high accuracy, preferably with the model that looks like the dirty harry gun. It’s sort of hard trying to find something that specific when there’s so many guns. I’m not really sure what, but it would be neat if they added in “something” for me to work for over a long period of time other than increasing my weapon levels to 50. Heck I dunno, maybe add in DLC missions where you can build a gun you want over a very long quest-line? Nothing too precise of course, just like selecting what the different characteristics would be etc, I for example, like to stray away from elemental weapons, I’m not really sure why, but I prefer to use normal weapons, however I do have a corrosive atlas revolver which I employ against Crimson Lance (and it looks comical how fast it shoots thanks to my character’s buffed fire rate) as it stands, my Roland’s build and gear loadout are as follows:

(I think aid station might be a tad pointless, and I honestly swap those 5 points about constantly, but for arguments sake, I’ll put them in aid station)

• Hyperion Crimson Cobra Combat Rifle
  
• 271 damage.
• 97 Accuracy
• 15 Rate of Fire.
• 52~ bullets to a clip/magazine/whatever (around that, I’m not sure how many it has by default)

• Jakobs Fearsome(?) Thunder Sniper Rifle
  
• 960 damage
• 96 Accuracy
• 0.4 Rate of Fire
• 17 shots

• Dahl(?) Terrible Matador Shotgun
• 170×12 damage
• 35 Accuracy
• 1.2 Rate of Fire
• 36~ shots

• Tediore Bloody Equaliser Revolver
• 760 damage
• 86 Accuracy
• 1 Rate of Fire
• 5 shots (default 2)

I also occasionly use (against Crimson Lance and Eridian)

• Atlas Vitriloic Revolver
• 400 damage [x3 Corrosive]
  
• 90~ Accuracy
• 1.6 Rate of Fire
• 8 shots

• Maliwan Scoped Destructor
  
• 1700 damage [x4 Shock]

I do have an amazing Hellfire SMG as well, but fuck SMGs and fuck Hellfire and fuck using the “best” weapon in the game, it looks dumb too.

Of course, I’m going by memory for these stats, those are rough estimates. As for other gear, I’m using a level 6 corrosive artifact on the turret, from what I’ve seen from testing, that’s by far the most useful one. Corrosive in general seems to be the superior elemental damage. Melts armour, melts flesh, melts faces, spreads to others, increases the damage you do to them, has no drawback from what I’ve seen. As for shields, I’m using one with 1620~ ish capacity and no bonus effects, just a “very high capacity” one, previously throughout the game I used health regen ones, but now that I have stat and aid station, it’s pretty much obsolete and I just go for the shield with the most capacity, I’ve also been looking for a 60% health shield, but no luck as of yet. Grenades likewise, I used transfusion for most of the game before swapping to corrosive bouncing betties, which I enjoy throwing into the air like fireworks. As for class mod, I’m using something like this

• 650 Heavy Gunner Mod
• +75% Weapon magazine size
• +3 impact
• +4 metal storm
• +3 overload
• +50% Weapon fire rate

I don’t actually know what the rate of fire increase is to be honest, as I can’t see it. I just know that it certainly does increase fire rate. Supposedly they are patching it so weapons can display more than 4 lines of text, that will be really helpful, I must say. From what I’ve experimented around with, that is by far the best mod. I do keep a +20 ammo regen mod in my backpack too, but frankly I never need to use it unless I’m running around and have “low” ammo and want to recharge whilst I’m out of combat or something. Shocktrooper seems pointless, Commando also seems pointless, Rifleman seems pointless and Tactician seems like it “could” be useful. Frankly, increasing weapon magazine size and rate of fire > increasing the other stuff. I think people tend to underestimate how useful magazine size and rate of fire is.

As for weapons, I usually look for two things, raw power and high accuracy. I tend to like Hyperion weapons a lot, but as for which weapons I’ve used the most, well, I dunno, I think there’s a way to check on an xbox profile thing, but I dunno. I would guess Tediore, as I’ve found several great Tediore legendary weapons that have lasted me a very long time. I don’t really like weapons that fire more than one bullet at once. I did use a Skullmasher for a very long time, but I find that Skullmashers and Mashers tend to be pretty sucky, maybe just for Roland, maybe they rock for Mordecai. I only use shotguns for multi-projectile weapons. Speaking of which I have had shotguns far more powerful than the one I’m currently using and listed above, but they had too small a magazine size. In comparison, once I get metal storm going, my current shotgun is ridiculous, I got ambushed by 2 badass fire skags, 1 corrosive and 1 normal badass alpha skag all at the same time (not badass, but I forget what the level 51 versions are called) and well, let’s just say that my shotgun destroyed all of them. That’s my go to weapon, if something is pissing me off, I swap to the ol’ faithful and just run up to them and unload 34578 bullets into their face for maximum damage.

Overall, I really want to like Borderlands, I DO really like it, I just really hope they support it heavily with DLC. I want to see new areas, more storyline, character specific missions, more ways to make the characters unique, possibly even a new character. I know there’s the zombie DLC coming soon, however details are scarce, all we know are that there are at least 3 achievements/missions:

“House of the Ned”/”Braaaaaaains”/”Jakob’s Fodder”

I think they could increase the level cap and add a 5th tier set of talents, or just add an extra one onto the 4th tier. I’ll be frank, the guided missile and supply packs are useless. Increasing the level cap to 55 or 60 would yield some benefits methinks, it would let people stretch out a bit more, show some more diversity in builds and what not.

I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what there is planned. What with that and Dragon Age, Bayonetta and Mass Effect 2 all coming out in several months, I’ve got plenty to keep me occupied.

What’s that? No Modern Warfare 2? Shit, son, I don’t know what to think about MW2. On the one hand I want to play the single player (multiplayer doesn’t really interest me THAT much, I would not play it religiously like most MLG prozzzzzzzz) as I really enjoyed the single player in COD4, right? Sure the story telling isn’t exactly great, but I found it immersive and just, well, fun. It’s the same reason I enjoyed COD1 so much way back in the day. I never really played COD2 or COD3 however..mostly as they came out in the deadzone era of when I played no games other than WoW. (like, 2005-2006) I really don’t want to support Activision, I don’t want to give them my money. It’s a dilemma and it pisses me off, Infinity Ward are being huge dicks and whilst no, it doesn’t affect me really, I’m not playing it on PC, I’m not playing MP, only really the SP. I still don’t want to give ‘em my money. I’m contemplating renting it, but special forces looks like it could be really fun..uh, why Activision? Why you gotta be cunts? Do you enjoy angering me? Do you want me to come and strangle you?

Before I finish, I’ll quickly touch on two things. First, 9 episodes into Ergo Proxy and I’m still confused as to what the fuck is going on. Pino however, is awesome. Second, this FAGS thing with IW/MW2/Adam Sessler and so on? Laughable. IW made an un-funny joke and Sessler has a fit about it, both parties in this case are like bickering three year olds, it’s just a word, and in-case you want to bring up “hurr u woldnt like it if i called u ____”. No, I wouldn’t like it. I wouldn’t dislike it either. I would have no opinion on the matter as I wouldn’t give a flying hootananny, neither should you. Honestly it’s sad that I, of all people, am berating others for being stupid and angry.

Much like 90% of the things I can talk about on this blog, it can be summarised as such:

It pisses me off.

I’M MAD.

Halloween 2009

FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU.

FUCK YEH.

Went for something a little bit special this year, as you can see. I suppose it should be noted that one year on, I still don’t like Halloween, I never have, as I said; I don’t get the point of it. Then again I don’t get the point of many things, but I’ll celebrate them if I get free stuff. AKA Christmas.

Last year my plan was to smash people into the pavement whilst chasing them down my street, it’s a pretty good plan but I have to adopt a new strategy otherwise my brain will fry. I had several plans that took advantage of the scaffolding currently around my house;

1. Sit ontop of the scaffolding with a gun ala Baron Flynt and take potshots at anyone who dares enter my property.
2. Slaughter trick or treaters and hang them from the scaffolding as a warning.

Whilst both of these plans could potentially work, in the end I think I’ve settled for this rather baroque plan: lasso them with this spare wiring and swing them around whilst screaming I’VE GOT ENOUGH FOR ALL’A'YEAH/AHHAHAH YOU WOKE THE WRONG DAWWG/STRIP THE FLESH, SALT THE WOOUND. I’ll alternate between the three catchphrases, possibly roaring some more Gears ones, just throwing them in to mix it up a bit you see?

I actually got a pair of trick or fuckers just now whilst I was writing this, one of them was I think meant to be batman, and I have no clue who the other was meant to be. So that’s two down. Maybe I’ll be nice to the next group that comes along, and give them a single crisp between the lot of them. I’d offer more but I kinda hate to share.

On a side note it’s almost the 2 year anniversary of this blog, not really a big deal but man, how time flies when you’re raging. Around this time next year, FFID will be drawing to its conclusion, but what video games will I be playing? What anime will I be watching? What will I be raging about? What in general will be happening on this blog a year from now? Will I still be spamming Dio pictures? Indeed, will I ever actually get Kenichi so I can add Apachai pictures into the fray? What about Liang Qi? Sayoko? Mao? Who can say!

Trick or MOLESTO

Also, I started watching Ergo Proxy a few days ago..yeah, I can’t say I honestly understand what’s going on, three episodes in, other than big angry Berserker style things chasing around the main character who has a name I can’t pronounce or even type and..crying at her? Yeah.

Actually, I forgot to upload this comic I found.

Just add in BONES taking out awesome cat Mao and making him crap Squirrel Mao who only exists to be hurled by hobo Hei.

I’ve returned

From my quest to eliminate postal workers.

Actually, no, Borderlands arrived late Saturday afternoon which pleased me greatly. What do I think about it? It’s as good as I expected. I dunno what else to say really, but I like basically everything about it, music, graphics (aside from the crazy pop in) the characters, the gameplay and yes, the guns. I’ve been playing Roland, who I enjoy playing as, but hell, I like all the characters apart from Lilith.

• Brick sounds hilarious in berserker rage and makes me lol everytime he does it, he also has cool callouts, FEEL IT indeed.
• If Brick makes me lol, then Mordecai makes me lmao whenever he gets downed. WHY? WHYYYYYYY?! I NEVER DIE! He’s a pain in the ass to heal though because he’s so skinny.
• Lilith annoys me, why? Whenever she takes damage she screams like a lunatic which drives me insane, just pipe down you Siren I thought you were one of the strongest beings in the universe. There is an end to your power. In-fact every generic bandit is an end to your power.

You know, most people are complaining about the end but I liked it, sure, it would’ve been nice to just find a huge room full of 50 treasure chests but when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Planet is called Pandora, vault is essentially the same thing as a box. Yeah, it makes sense. I also like that they didn’t specifically set it up for a sequel, I honestly grow sick of that, sure, having sequels to great games is indeed great..but it bugs me when they specifically make planned trilogies just so they can cut stuff out of one game. If you’re making a sequel, do it for a reason. Example, Transformers, why are you making a sequel? Well, one could argue the first film was UTTER COMPLETE SHIT thus they should make a sequel which is actually goodhahahahahahahah. Well no, they both suck, they suck the shit. Not just shit, THE shit.

That being said, I tend to enjoy games where they don’t focus too much on the story, because it makes me actively want to know more about the story, this happened with Gears too, when they don’t cram it down your throat, it kinda makes you want to find out more on your own. I’d like to know more about the gun companies, specifically Dahl, Atlas and Hyperion, what’s up with that satelight? Avoiding spoilers, yeah, I think DLC could be good to explain some of these things, and I’m assuming this zombie DLC will be out in time for Halloween..perhaps not though looking at the date.

What else has been going down? Well, I finished Erthus. Gintama’s latest arc, the uh, what’s the name of it, Jiraia arc? Spider arc? Yoshiwara part 2? Whatever, the latest arc involving these things has finished, and I enjoyed it. Really, is that news? I enjoyed Gintama!? It’s rare that I don’t like Gintama, so take it as read that I like it, just like you should take it as read that if I don’t specifically say otherwise, I hate everything. So this latest arc was sort of a mirror of the Yoshiwara is burning arc (and ironically, Yoshiwara DID burn in this story) in some ways. For one thing, whilst the Hosen story was themed around the sun, and how whats-her-name was the “sun” of Yoshiwara, a city that, being underground, obviously never sees daylight. Whereas in this arc, it focused more on the moon, aka Tsukuyo, you know, how the sun and moon both give light etc etc. You’ll probably notice that, most Gintama story arcs have a theme. Benizakura for example, if I recall correctly, was about moths being drawn to light and so on. I won’t go into now though.

Also, there seems to be a REAL Benizakura arc movie coming next year (around the same time as the E7 movie came out this year) honestly this being Gintama, who can tell. It’s true they did before have a fake trailer for Benizakura movie, and they actually just re-used that one, but this seem it seems like it’s genuinely coming out, at least, I damn hope so. It’s about time Gintama started getting movies.

You know what else should get a movie? JoJo. Whilst it’s hard to adapt JoJo’s style into anime and virtually impossible to adapt it into live action and the style is arguably a big part of it, I still think JoJo would make a great live action film. Cheesy? Yes. Great? You know it would be. Which part? Hell I don’t care, but part 1/2/3 would make a great movie trilogy, even if part 3 alone has enough content for 2/3 movies. Personally I think a trilogy of the first three parts would be great, you might think part 2 is irrelevant considering it’s not specifically got Dio in, but it explores the origins of the stone mask which is important. You know what it explores? The origins of Joseph “fuckyes” Joestar.

That’s all for now.

Buying Borderlands: £35  Buying snacks + lucozade to last all weekend: £5  Finding a gun so good that lasts you 20 levels: priceless.

There are some things in life money can’t buy, for everything else there’s Plantercards.

You crossed the line, Union Workers

Lant gets very upset when his game doesn’t arrive because of faggot union workers crying that they don’t get enough money for their job.

Hey, here’s an idea, GET A BETTER JOB IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT.

I was tempted to just go pick up a copy from Game or something, but in the end I decided against it..mostly as I couldn’t go out until 3pm, which meant by the time I arrived there would probably be school kid idiots roaming about.

How upset am I that my copy hasn’t arrived?

<Lant>    IS THIS THE REAL WORLD?
<Lant>    IS THIS JUST SSAGA?
<Lant>    CAUGHT IN A THES SLIDE
<Lant>    NO ESCAPE FROM TRESK’S BRIDGE
<Lant>    OPEN YOUR MASK
<Lant>    LOOK UP TO THE SKIES AND SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
<Lant>    I’M JUST A POOR PLANT
<Lant>    I NEED BORDERLANDS
<Lant>    BECAUSE I’M EASY COME, EASY RAGE
<Lant>    LITTLE HIGH, CRUSHER LOW
<Lant>    ANYWAY THE WIND BLOWS, DOESN’T REALLY MATTER
<Lant>    TO ME
<Lant>    THORSION
<Lant>    JUST KILLED A SWEDE
<Lant>    PUT A PLANT AGAINST HIS HEAD
<Lant>    PULLED THE VINE NOW HE’S DEAD
<Lant>    THORSION
<Lant>    LIFE HAD JUST BEGUN
<Lant>    BUT NOW I’VE GONE AND THROWN IT ALL AWAY
<Lant>    THORSIONNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
<Lant>    DIDN’T MEAN TO MAKE YOU CRY
<Lant>    IF I’M NOT BACK AGAIN THIS TIME TOMOROW
<Lant>    CARRY ON
<Lant>    AS IF NOTHING REALLY HAPPENED
<Lant>    TOO LATE
<Lant>    FRAH’S TIME HAS COME
<Lant>    SENDS SHIVERS DOWN MY VINES
<Lant>    STEMS SHAKING ALL THE TIME
<Lant>    GOODBYE, EVERYBODY
<Lant>    I’VE GOTTTT TO GO
<Lant>    GOTTA LEAVE YOU ALL BEHIND AND FACE THE TRUTH
<Lant>    THORSIONNOOOOOOO
<Lant>    I DON’T WANT TO DIE
<Lant>    SOMETIMES I WISH I’D NEVER BEEN BORN AT ALLLL
<Lant>    [guitar solo]
<Lant>    I SEE A LITTLE SILHOUETTO OF A MAN
<Thorsion>    success?
<Lant>    ADAMOOSE ADAMOOSE WILL YOU DO THE STEAKANGO
<Lant>    THUNDERBOLTS AND THORSION
<Lant>    VERY VERY FRIGHTENING ME
<Lant>    GALIFRAHLO
<Lant>    X5
<Lant>    BUT I’M JUST A POOR PLANT
<Lant>    BORDERLANDS DOESN’T LOVE ME
<Lant>    ”HE’S JUST A POOR PLANT FROM A POOR FAMILY”
<Lant>    ”SPARE HIM HIS LIFEGIVEHIMBORDERLANDS”
<Thorsion>    you’ve lost it
<Lant>    EASY COME EASY GO
<Lant>    WILL YOU GIVE ME BORDERLANDS
<Lant>    BISMILAH NO, WE WILL NOT GIVE YOU BORDERLANDS
<Lant>    GIVE HIM BORDERLANDS
<Lant>    BISMILAH, WE WILL NOT GIVE YOU BORDERLANDS
<Lant>    GIVE HIM BORDERLANDS
<Lant>    BISMILAH, WE WILL NOT GIVE YOU BORDERLANDS
<Lant>    GIVE ME BORDERLANDS
<Lant>    WILL NOT GIVE YOU BORDERLANDS
<Lant>    NO NO NO “>NO “>NO NO NO NO
<Lant>    OH MAMIA MIA MAMA MIA
<Lant>    TRIGOR HAS A TRIANGLE PUT ASIDE FOR ME
<Lant>    FOR ME
<Lant>    FOR MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
<Lant>    SO YOU THINK YOU CAN TROLL ME AND SPIT IN MY EYE?
<Lant>    SO YOU THINK YOU CAN POSTAL STRIKE AND LEAVE ME TO DIE?
<Lant>    OH BABYYYYYYY
<Lant>    CAN’T DO THIS TO ME BABY
<Lant>    JUST GOTTA PLAY BORDERLANDS
<Lant>    DUN DUN DUN “>DUN DUN
<Lant>    NOTHING REALLY MATTERS
<Lant>    ANYONE CAN SEE
<Lant>    NOTHING REALLY MATTERS..NOTHING REALLY MATTERS TO ME (other than Borderlands)

You’d be surprised how tough it is to adapt songs into Lantmode in real time. I’m not as good as Frahlo who sits there hating mangey and cumming, all on you.

Huuurr durrr where’s my gaaaaaaaaame.

Just so you know, I’m personally going to track down every single worker who was on strike today, and castrate them, Kill Bill style, potentially using a copy of the game as extra karma justice points.

Seriously, why today, out of all the days in the year. Why today. I hate you.

On the bright side though, BIG MIKE’s got it and seems to like it, and as I thought, he seems to like Brick:

<Thorsion> …….
<Thorsion> brick is mine
<Thorsion> 100% mine

Planterlands Roachai/Apaland

This is how I’m going to spec, to save me looking through my folders everytime I want to remind myself.

First build, aka until I start getting good items + class mods with ammo regen on.

15/15/15 I’m a fucking hybrid.

15/5/25 Ironically the more offensive build has more points in medic.

FRAHLOOOYEAAHHHH

Sorry, Mike, I lament the death of your internet.

FRAHLO! FRAHLO! FRAHLO!

FRAHLO! FRAHLOOOOYEAHHHHHHHHHHHH!

FRAHLO! FRAHLO! FRAHLO!

FRAHLO! FRAHLOOOOYEAHHHHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Flaming badass wolf cunts that took me far longer it should have to find that song in my previous post so I could paste it in here, that’s the flaw of my stupid post titles.

So, there’s Frahlo, as he appears in FFID from chapter 13 (or so) onwards, with the hat! The Deepsea dive hat! The very thing that defines who he is! Now you know what Mont and Frahlo looks like, why that just leaves Erthus! Are you sure you wanna see what Erthus looks like? Think very very carefully about that question.

SHIT SHIT indeed, his face is so angry and ugly it could blind Medusa. Of course, that’s just a screenshot Adam/Taiko/Erthus gave me ages ago, the REAL Erthus character got banned long long long ago, so his face is starting to become lost in the mists of time. Needless to say, Erthus is the last of the main character trio, why? Well, I asked A-master-RAGE if he wanted to sketch it and he obliged so we’ll see how this turns out.

I must admit, Frahlo was the least troublesome, it took me about 9 hours to do him, and if you want to see the stages, well, just take a look at this! Of course, I realised AFTER I saved that, that perhaps I should’ve put the sketch/scanned stage in too, oh well. Yeah, Frahlo was easy, I didn’t have to draw his face so to speak, and I knew what pose to use instantly, the Frah-pose, which I always made him do in wallpapers using model viewer and stuff. I went for a more WoW’y look than with Mont (obviously, just look at the tabard and hat which are taken straight from WoW!) but I still kept uh..my own touch you could say? I hate the robes in WoW, so I didn’t give Frahlo robes, it might be hard to see, but what he’s wearing isn’t a robe..uuh, actually it is, it’s just not a WoW robe. I dunno who imagined those WoW robes were a good idea, but go and try run whilst wearing a dress, cos that’s what those WoW robes are. Dresses, you’ll fall over and break your nose and begin making cow grunt noises. Oh, as for the background, it’s just a picture of Dalaran, ironically I’ve never been there, but it seemed a fitting place for Frahlo, and I liked the angle that shot was at.

As for Frahlo’s gear, there’s the Deepsea dive helmet, which he has heavily enchanted to make it as strong as plate, yet as light as cloth, it also obviously allows him to breathe in any enviroment. Grampok the gnome also installed a rocket booster to it, unknown to Frahlo. His robes are the Quantum Battle Mage Robes of the Unending deep, they have a stoneskin enchantment on them to make them extremely durable yet light. Although you can’t see all of it, the staff he is holding is Vajra, the staff Rollard created for Lant, it amplifies fire..a lot, notice the red gem at the bottom? Check out the Mont picture and you’ll see Vapor has a blue gem for ice. Another neat thing about Frahlo’s robes, the “unending deep” part, they have huge dimensional pocket things in, so he can store all his shit. On his belt you’ll see three gem things, these are magic school enhancers, from left to right, fire, arcane and ice. These are basically stones full of magic energy which Frahlo uses to amplify his spells, be it a power increase, using them for extra mana, or even destroying them to create a devastating spell. He has many more magic gem reagants, but those three are extremely potent hence why they are kept on his belt. Also not shown are a dagger and sword which he keeps within the giga pockets of his robe. His gloves are his other handy (no pun intended) tools, the left glove is slightly thinner as you can see, and has a flame emblem on it, this is his “offensive” hand you could say, that glove enhances fire whereas his other glove/hand is for defense, the material is thicker, and although hidden, there’s an ice emblem on it which enhances his defensive ice magic, unsurprisingly. Finally, his cloak is probably just a generic magicy cloak. There’s also arcane runes etched along both his arms, like tattoos you could say, basically, Frahlo is like a battery, whilst he might not be the strongest mage on his own, he has a lot of tricks to enhance his channeling of magic, not to mention tools to keep him from running his mana pool dry, and if he does use it all up..well, there’s always Mirasmiel.

Erthus has the largest gear list, he’ll be fun to draw.

Now I’m gonna go sleep, these pesky builders are beginning to stab my house again. Correction, it seems today they are just painting. That’s good, they won’t wake me up.

Word of advice, never wake Lant up.

You will see hell.

2 PART HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: BORDERLANDS + INTERNET ETIQUETTE

What’s that, it’s not Halloween yet? Blow it out ya ass! Like I care, I needed a suitably awesome ultra magnum style sounding post title. There’s two subjects that I will discuss in this post, firstly, Borderlands and it’s developers Gearbox, and second, internet etiquette, or to be more precise, why people are retards on the internet.

Borderlands is coming out in under four days, exciting times for people like me who have been looking for a new loot collecting, enemy smashing game. Sure, it’s no Dark Alliance 3, but I’m willing to see how it can work in an FPS game, from what I’ve seen so far? Damn does it work. Despite the game not even being out yet, I’ve seen around 20 hours of gameplay, including the start and end of the game thanks to a stream of somebody who obtained the game (legally) before it came out. It’s not even about the game that I’m really focusing on here, it’s more on the devs, Gearbox. I will touch slightly on the game first, and don’t worry, no story spoilers, but there’ll probably be some gun spoilers, so if you don’t want to know about some guns I saw..skip to the next paragraph.

From what I saw of Borderlands, the gameplay consists of this, go to town A) pick up 5 missions, go out into the surrounding zone and do those missions, return, hand in. Sound’s a lot like an MMO doesn’t it? You’d be right in thinking that, it does sound a lot like WoW per se. Some people are complaining about this but I would have you stop a moment and consider, what are the quests like in say, Oblivion? Go to Ayleid ruin X and obtain item Y. It sounds bad in theory but in practice it’s fun, it’s not the quest per se that is interesting, it’s the promise of loots and rewards that makes it interesting. Even in Oblivion it’s exciting, and that game doesn’t exactly have the best random loot system. No, I have no problem with those sorts of quests as long as the gameplay is engaging, in WoW it’s solely because I want to level up. I saw some interesting guns too, which is of course, the whole point of Borderlands. Highlights include an SMG which fired bullets which bounced off the floor and walls, a bazooka that fired mini nukes, and some sort of shotgun that fired six rounds in a second all of which seemed to explode.

It was more the devs though, that interested me. I’ll admit I never really knew of Gearbox before, I knew they had ported Halo 1 to the PC, and created the Brother in Arms series, but again, I was never a huge fan of either Halo or WW2 games. Over the weekend whilst I was watching this stream, there were several Gearbox developers in the stream for most of the time, watching the guy play, giving tips, answering questions and generally just talking to the fans of the game. Of course some people would tell you the entire stream was just viral advertising, but frankly, these are mostly people from /v/, who are trolls or idiots, or more frequently, both. It was nice, I’ve not seen devs so in touch with the community before, and I hope it’s a sign of how things will be from now on. It does seem like the developers are trying to communicate with their communities more, and for the most part, this is a brilliant thing. Also there’s at least two guns in Borderlands named after forum members, which is nice.

As for the second part of this post, it’s far less happy. Did you see what I did? I offset any anger I might have had by writing happy thoughts first. I was going to write this yesterday when I was even angrier, but I decided against it and as such I’ve now had more time to think on the matter, to hopefully provide a more coherent post.

What is internet etiquette? To put it simply, I’m referring to how people act on the internet. As such it’s also a look at anonymity (I literally cannot pronounce that word right, good thing this is written.) Whilst I am mostly touching on online games, basically anything internet related counts here. Let me give an example of what happened last night. Have you ever played fighting games? Yes? No? Maybe it’s just me, but I am usually polite, on the surface, to anyone I come across on the internet. That is to say, even if they are a prick, I’ll act polite and not go around calling them a, and I quote from an XBL message I once recieved, “faggot ass nigger fag”, and for the record, I am not pile of wood, a meatball, nor a donkey, nor indeed a negro. There’s a motto, a phrase you could say, that I feel describes my mindset when playing a game online. Play hard and play fair. At the risk of sounding stupid, it’s like a code of e-honour or e-chilvary. Treat others like you would wish to be treated. That is to say, if you’re some hardcore rebellious 14 year old who treats me like shit, I will subsequently treat you like ten piles of shit and destroy you. Going back to my example, whilst playing DOA4 with a friend last night, I hosted a room and we formed a tag team. What followed was perhaps the most pathetic session of online gaming I have ever witnesssed. Essentially every player we faced that evening did one or more or ALL of the following:

• Disconnected from the match when it was clear we were going to win.
• Spammed cheap tactics.
• Left the session after winning once (usually due to a fluke.)

What does this mean? Well, if they disconnect the match before we actually beat them, we don’t get any points, they lose points for losing to us, but they lose MORE for disconnecting unless the morons have found a way to quit a match without getting a penalty, which would not surprise me. Either way, I was getting denied the grade points I earned from winning, these same people would leave and join, and eventually, they would win, due to the above mentioned fluke, play a guy 10 times and you’re bound to get lucky thanks to your shitty connection lag and win, after winning, and making us lose a lot of points, they would instantly leave. Now that’s not good sport pals, if you’re playing a fighting game, you don’t just leave the instant you beat someone, you stay and have rematches. If I’m getting beaten by somebody, I’m going to keep fighting them until I beat them, and for the most part, it takes me 2 matches tops to formulate a strategy to use against any player, it’s something I have somewhat pride in, me and BIG MIKE make a very good team, we are very adaptable, we can essentially beat anyone we come against by using superior tactics and adaptating our playstyle, unlike many of the people we face who just try the same thing over and over.

There’s another phrase that gets tossed around out of peoples asses on the internet called “Playing to win.” It’s the mindset that, as long as you win, it doesn’t matter how you do it. I find this incredibly amusing and immature. Let’s say you cheat in Ninja Gaiden to get the Master Ninja achievement, that’s playing to win, yes? You did anything to win, you abused glitches and you cheated, but you got the achievement. I can’t say as I’m not a pathetic person who does things like that, but I can imagine it feels hollow. What I can say however, is that if some moron is spamming Hayabusa at me in DOA4, I will pick Hayabusa and spam right back at him to see how he likes it. I take no pride in winning like that, it’s an empty victory and the sole purpose of me doing it wasn’t to win, but rather to highlight to this goon, how stupid he is. When I win, I want to win fair and square. I have to win fair and square. This is why I usually stray away from top tier characters, or abusing the strongest combos and so on, when I beat you, I don’t want you coming up with any excuse, you need to accept that I am superior to you. That’s not to say I can’t accept other people being superior to me, of course not, there’s plenty of people who can destroy me in DOA4 or other games, but sadly the matter of the fact is that 80% of the time, I lose to things not related to skill.

Anyway, what is it, I asked myself (and by extension, BIG MIKE) that compels people to act like brainless twats over the internet? Is it the “mask of anonymity” so to speak? Yeah, I think it is. Now I’ve not been playing online games as long as some people, heck I only got a computer in like 2004, I was late to the online scene compared to all my friends you could say. Yet even so in just these few years I’ve seen so much shit that it amazes me that I still bother using the internet. Is it the knowledge that you are safe over the internet? Yes, I think it is. If I call you a semen-slurping anus-blending cuntpope, there’s not really much you can do about it. Should you let it get to you? No, it’s just a word, and hell most of my greetings to friends start much like that. Conversely, if you call me that, can I do anything to you? Well yes, I can. I am Lant after all and it would be a flaw to underestimate me. Never-the-less, the fact stands that most people cannot do anything to you over the internet, so you feel safe to act like a dick. Even more interesting is when you are utterly anonymous, when people assume they are anonymous, their other sides come into being and they act like their true selves. It’s ironic, they are technically wearing a mask, but in truth it’s their real self. (Let’s not even go into how that works in Bleach, not now.) It’s as if your real face is the mask, you could say. Me? No, I do not change my personality whether I am anonymous or not, in real life however, that is to say, in the work enviroment, I do wear a mask you could say, doesn’t everyone? I’m a lot more mellow and people often call me shy.

That’s the problem, whilst I do not, many people think of the internet as a shield, allowing them to show their true selves, after-all, what are you going to do about it? Can they fix this? No, not in our society, if I was ruler of the world in more than just name, I would make it so that whenever you transmit your mic your home address and a mugshot of you would pop up in the corner of the screen, that would shut people up pretty quick. Why do I bother talking about all this? In the end there’s not much I can do to change it without blowing my cover as the ancient, almighty plant king. It upsets me, so to speak. It upsets me that I am the same race and species as these insects, I find it insulting to be compared to them. That aside, it’s not fun to play with them, I don’t enjoy it, and that’s what it all boils down to. In online games, to quote Zaraki; kill, or be killed, it’s just a way to kill time.

To summarise, people are a problem and I hate them, apart from the people who make awesome games like (hopefully!) Borderlands.

2000 words exactly? You bet.

Ultra Simple

Under a week to go for Borderlands now, they’ve also announced what the first DLC will be, zombies. So 10/10 for style but minus several million points for originality. People are getting their hands on the game now, what with leaks and so forth, so lots of details and gameplay is coming out, which suits me fine, I don’t really even care about spoilers that much, although I will try to avoid them if I can.

I finished re-watching Last Exile for the third time yesterday, and whilst I mostly did it to obtain more Dioreaction pictures, it’s still a fun series to watch. Really though, I didn’t exactly notice that much new stuff per se, nothing dramatically exciting. It’s the sort of series I feel would be good with director’s commentary, you know? To explain a small details about the world you wouldn’t notice otherwise, I’ve always liked these commentaries since I first found them on DVDs, I think they really add a lot to the film or series or whatever. My gripes with LE still stand though, at times the pacing is awkward, the animation can be a little stiff, and the scenes in general could be put together a little better. Also, I feel that they could have expanded upon just WHY the Guild are evil and need to be removed, the only time they really touch on that is at the very start and very end. All things considered, Claus and Lavie are happy enough at the start, it’s not like they are being brutally oppressed, it’s only near the end when they are taken before the Maestro that you properly start thinking “wow she’s a bitch.” That, and the two major gripes I had with it the first time I finished it, a) the show drags on for too long at the start, not enough happens and b) Dio’s character didn’t have a proper ending. It’s odd, Dio is arguably a far more important character than Mullin, who’s role was rather confusing to me, he sort of seems like he’ll be an important character in the first two episodes or so, but then he basically just sits in the background for the whole middle of the series, and comes back in the final two episodes. He gets a happy ending for his character, there’s closure, so to speak. Dio? The character who arguably most deserves a happy ending gets the worst ending of all, he falls into a huge hurricane whilst thinking his best friend has just died/fallen in. Luciola at least died after he accomplished something, he died happy we can assume, considering he died with a smile on his face. Of course, Dio doesn’t actually die as you hear him in the Silvana later, but the way his character was wrapped up feels like he was just a background character who played no importance. Which is odd, considering EVERY major plot point is more or less instigated by him. Proper first encounter with the Guild? Dio starts it, realising the Guild have a presence at the auction? Dio. Somebody telling Claus who Alex really is? Dio, amazing, considering the photo is right there for Claus to see for like 5 episodes but it’s not until Dio literally shoves it right into his face and specifically tells him, that he realises. Oh, let’s not forget it’s Dio who finds Claus in the desert which he gets stuck in for like 2 relatively pointless episodes which could have been done in half an episode. It bugs me, it also bugs me how Lavie sort of just vanishes into the background for the middle of the series, I think they could have balanced their characters far better.

Again, I do like Last Exile a lot, I’m just nitpicking, and there’s far more stuff I can nitpick about than in, for example, E7. The very last shot of LE and the recent rumours/concept art do reinforce my hope that there’s a Last Exile movie in the works.

Yeah I know it’s about a vague a final message you can get, but hey, I can grasp at straws, right? There was an E7 movie after-all. LE has some very very cinematic moments which would be great, the climactic battle for one thing is great as they fight above Exile in a blizzard, not to mention the dusk-time dogfight slightly before that where the vanships go all death-star trench run on the Guild warships. Last Exile would work great as a movie I feel, you’d just have to cut out a lot of the middle and start parts which focus on character development, and hey, perhaps it’s just me, but I really didn’t care enough for Tatiana to have about 3 episodes devoted to her character, which was essentially a pointless side character. You know what else they could improve in the movie? Alvis and Alex’s characters, they should play a more important role and get more backstory, really, revenge is cool and all but Alex’s goals are amazingly simple minded and don’t make you emphasize with him at all, and considering the show is ABOUT Alvis, what with her literally being the “Last Exile” you could say, she doesn’t really get much character growth, she just goes from WHERE’S GUITA?! to WHERE’S CLAUS!? and from I HATE YOU DIO to DIO I BAKED YOU A CAKE. Live action or animated, a LE movie would be the shit.

There’s another part to this post, it’s about DtB2. Having watched the second episode, which was slightly less shit than the first, it’s still far from good. What new contractor powers have we seen so far? Teleporting, lightsabers and spacial distortion. Yawn. The show has virtually nothing from the first season that made it worth watching. On the bright side, Yin made an, albeit brief, appearance in this episode, and Mao possibly. It’s also very highly possible that they’ve chosen the most cliched generic plot device ever. I don’t understand the logic behind their attitude, DtB sold well, yes? That’s why they are making a sequel, yes? So why are they turning it all fanservicey and retarded. In two episodes there’s been two naked characters. It’s not the best example, but it’s also not a good sign. You know how many naked characters E7 has, for example? Two. Renton and Holland in that episode when they have a bath and strangle each other. LE? None. Gintama doesn’t really work as it’s a comedy, and Gintoki’s clothes seem to fly off whenever he runs out of money like some sort of bizarre RPG status. But yeah, it’s not that fanservice or whatever is bad and I can understand they need to cater to 14 year olds but this just seems overkill and ruins the feeling of DtB. The designers and directors attitude is based on three things: ignorance, stupidity, and nothing else.

Now, just in-case BIG MIKE thought he could get away without me spamming more images to slow him down, I’ll illustrate how thick Claus is.

Yes I can, I am Montolio, my hat is supreme

Title is ripped straight from IRC, god fucking shit damn deja vu I hate that shit. Wow that was probably the most deja of all vus.

Anyway, so the title is actually going to be relevant for once, I know! I know!

I drew this thing, it’s Montolio. (Warning, it’s so huge I had to make the preview picture below tiny)

It’s not perfect certainly, but I think it’s the best digital/vector I’ve done so far, I tried out some new TRIX and techniques at shading, and I think it came out pretty good. It’s ironic, I started it and hated how it looked, but then BIG MIKE said I should do some more so I figured why not, so we have the Mike that is also BIG to thank for that. Ironically I thank him by putting even huger images on my blog, so it’ll take him 12 batos’ to load.

That’s Montolio, as he appears in part 3 through to the end of the story. Including old man Montolio, just..imagine the hat and stuff a bit more weathered. I’m amazingly shit at drawing stuff which doesn’t look cartoony or animey (not that I’m good at drawing anime – I suck at drawing anything and everything) however I’m not too annoyed with how it came out, it’s got a sort of comic book feel which is alright with me. Now, he should in theory be a little bit bigger, a bit buffer so to speak, but we can chalk this down to two things, a) I fail at drawing and b) his mother was an elf, and elves are slender.

This is obviously Montolio when he’s not a Paladin, I won’t spoil anything, but from part 3 on, he’s not a Paladin, just a man. So no super powers, no more crazy hax. Anyway as for his equipment in that picture, damn right I know what it is, perhaps I go overkill, but I have full gearsets done for each character, it helps to picture how they would move and fight and so on, anyway yeah, Montolio’s got the hat, the classic Mont hat. His cape/poncho/thing is elven, a gift from his wife, it’s also got the alliance emblem on the chest, which is partially concealed in the picture (I actually did the whole thing before realising it’d be covered up, to my grand irritation) So under that’s just, well, a normal black shirt. His shoulderpad is time-forged battle plate, or to put it in WoW terms, it’s AQ40 avenger’s pauldrons, I know it doesn’t LOOK like them, but to be honest, WoW’s shoulder pads all look retarded. Yeah, there’s just one. Everything else is normal, breeches, boots and so forth. Of course, there’s the eyepatch Frahlo gave him, that’s basically the only magical item he has, that and the hat, which can turn the strongest blade, yet still weighs as much as your generic leather hat would. As for weapons, there’s Vapor hilted at his side (the sword he’s used since chapter 6 or so) and next to that is the hilt of..well, I won’t spoil that yet, but the unsheathed sword that Mont’s holding is a very important part of the plot in the third part. It’s technically already spoilers as seeing that obviously means he WILL get it at some point, but it’s Montolio, you didn’t think there’d be something awesome which he wouldn’t steal/obtain, did you!? Anyway, not pictured is Mont’s Marshal’s Sunderer, aka the two handed axe, and his bow. He’s not got the axe in that picture as it would be pointless, although his shortbow is on his back, hidden from sight. Both bow and arrows are generic, not magical. Finally, the clasp of his cloak thingy is an insigna of the alliance (which was a pain in the ass to draw) which isn’t magical in FFID world, even if it is in game. There’s also two rings which are hidden by the gloves on his left hand, his wedding ring and his Di’Bruchae family seal, both of which are relatively normal rings, the seal has an icicle engraved upon it, of course, Erthus and Lant have the corresponding rings of a lightning bolt and flame respectively, these rings are magical, Montolio’s, unknown to him, gives him frost resistance, 1 guess what the lightning and flame ring do.

You may or may not have noticed that both blades there have a sort of gem for the pommel/counterweight, there’s a reason for this, and the two blades are not totally unrelated.

As for the context of that scene, it’s from the climax of part 3, Montolio confronts the orc Uska in Nagrand at dawn, atop one of the many floating islands. Montolio alone doesn’t stand a chance against Uska, but he’s also not stupid enough to fight a battle he can’t win. The golden blade having a glow about it, the sun rising, and indeed, Montolio having the sun at his back are all connected. After-all, if you’re going to fight someone, might as well posistion yourself so that the sun is in their eyes right? Of course, Uska’s not just a skilled warrior, he may or may not have a certain cursed axe which may or may not, reap spines.

Well, I’ve wasted enough time babbling here, this Borderlands video has now fully loaded so I’m going to go check it out then sleep. Only 8 days to go until Borderlands now, I’m pretty excited about it, I just hope it’s not another Fable 2. What are the chances that it will be?

For you my friend? Very high! Ohohohoho

!bathplughurl

Lant’s thoughts on the Bayonetta Demo

About three, actually.

Alright so that Bayonetta demo, I finally got it working after some pain with Microsoft and DVDRs, but it’s all good now. I was obviously playing the 360 demo (which is the superior one all signs indicate.) so I figured I’d post my thoughts on it as I don’t like my blog updating with nothing for a few days in a row, it makes my banner’s lonely.

First off, I still don’t like Bayonetta’s design, her voice annoys me, she has an unattractive design, her head is a peanut and her body proportions are even more fucked up than the DOA characters (who are like anime style and don’t look realistic in the first place.) and I dislike her outfit. Why black? It’s a very basic design principle, if you’re making a game where you’re going to be fighting many or ANY enemies, don’t MAKE YOUR CHARACTER WEAR ALL BLACK. Your character is meant to stand out and be vibrant so you can instantly tell them apart, look at Dante, he’s wearing a red jacket, that stands out, catches your eye, that’s good! Ryu annoyingly wears all black in his default costume, and when you’re on the easier difficulty settings getting swarmed by black ninjas, it’s a tad hard to keep track at times, not so much an issue on mentor and above, plus you can unlock and use other costumes.

That aside, the presentation is nice, the voice acting is cheesy, but that’s to be expected, it honestly doesn’t matter. I found the graphics quite pleasing to the eye, from what I saw, the action seemed to be locked at 60fps, apart from on the falling clocktower, but I think that might have been down to the disk I was playing it off to be honest, I can’t hold that against the game. Overall, the graphics are about on par with DMC4, which was also a nice looking game, however DMC4 won in terms of special effects I honestly think. Bayonetta is a crisp, bright and vibrant looking game for the most part, the lighting also impressed me.

So the most important part, the gameplay. To me, the gameplay felt like a blend of Ninja Gaiden and DMC3, you have two (in the demo at least) weapons you can swap between at any time, then you have a punch button, a kick button, and a projectile button, I attempted to re-map the controls to be the same as NG2. Combo’s seemed to be mostly variations of delayed button inputs, which strongly discourages button mashing, that’s not really my favourite system, but I can work with it. Mostly though, the gameplay was like DMC, with several moves taken straight from it, so if you’ve played DMC this will feel not too different. Also like DMC, there is no block button, the designer supposedly thinks that blocking means you’ve automatically lost or something strange like that, whatever, instead there’s a dodge button. Now, it’s been a while since I played DMC but if I recall correctly, dodge and jump were the same button in DMC, I might be wrong, but that is not the case in Bayonetta, which pleases me. Now, I didn’t do much weapon swapping, and I mostly stuck with the katana weapon as I love swords, and this one was just the sort of moveset I like, had some charge moves, wide area sweeping hits and all that lovely shit.

From what little I’ve seen, the gameplay is a little below DMC and NG, however it might improve later in the game once you have more powers/weapons and so on, sort of hard to judge from just a demo. Overall though? Yeah, I like it, there’s no quick time events, the action is fast paced and stylish, and whilst not NG2 level brutal, there’s certainly some eye-candy in terms of violence. I couldn’t quite understand the point of torture attacks though, are they just meant to be a way to insta-kill one enemy using magic? Score multipliers? I’m not really sure, but as much as Kamiya hates on NG and Itagaki, the dodging, control scheme and torture attacks all make me think of NG2. Yeah, sure, NG didn’t invent violent finishers..but it just seemed a lot like it in my mind. Overall I didn’t really like torture attacks as it just involved hammering the buttons as hard as fucking possible, which will break my controller eventually. Another thing Bayonetta has is witch time, in DMC terms, it’s like the table hopper, in NG2 terms it’s like the violent wind evasion, basically if you dodge with perfect timing, you get a bonus. In this case the bonus is that enemies all slow down and you slightly speed up. I’m not sure how big a part of the game mechanic this will be, but I get the impression it will be huge. What’s to stop you from just spamming witch time and the katana’s 2 level charge attack? We’ll see.

Well, the important part, did it make me like it enough to buy it? Yeah, I liked the gameplay, and I really love action games so I will be sure to pick Bayonetta up. The story looks laughably bad, but again, that’s not really a problem in action games. I can’t think of any other action games coming out that will be superior either. Also, Bayonetta has probably one of the most kickass intros I’ve played in..well. in recent memory.

Honestly, I can’t think of anything that tops that, nothing springs to mind. That’s good though, a game’s intro is really important, many games ignore this and go “ummm you’ll be strong at the end of the game don’t worry.”, that’s all well and good but you have to hook people at the start too. Look at Lost Odyssey, that did it perfectly, it’s an RPG, you DO start off weak but HOLY SHIT IS THAT GUY ZHAO YUN HE’S JUST GALOSHING ALL THESE HUGE HAT MEN WOW I’M PLAYING WHAT’S THAT A BIG MACHINE NO PROBLEM SIR I’M IMMORTAL I’LL PUNCH IT. You get the picture.

Starting a game off with a bang is very important.

Whilst I’m on the subject of demoes, I also played the Brutal Legend demo recently, it’s alright I suppose? Gameplay is simple, which isn’t exactly a bad thing, it’s sort of the opposite of games like Bayonetta, you play Brutal Legend for the story..well, for the writing and the characters, and the gameplay is a nice addition. I’m not sure whether I’ll buy Brutal Legend or not, rent, perhaps, much like Arkham Asylum. Problem with games like those are that once I’ve seen the story (which is usually 12-15 hours) I don’t have any urge to replay the game on higher difficulties as they are laughable. NG2, whilst the story may be crap, is very fun to replay in my opinion as everything ramps up, and for the most part, there aren’t many parts of the game I HATE to do again..other than  chapter 9, GAWWWWWD ROBOT SENTRIES IN THE AMAZON FORESTS. NGB, in comparison, has those water puzzle stages which I hate.

Well, I’ll finish this post with anime-related stuff, if you want to see my reaction to the DtB2 first episode, look at the comics page. In short, I hated it and it couldn’t keep my attention for more than 2 minutes, I just left it playing in the background until the last 5 minutes or so. I really hope it improves. Other than that, there’s nothing much else that’s caught my attention this season. FMA’s still airing, and it’s getting pretty enjoyable to watch now that it’s getting into the story proper.

Uuuh bye, I’m going to go find some delicious food.

Oh by the way, this post is 1300 words long, hah!