Woops

I’d like to say the reason I didn’t actually bother updating was because I’ve been busy, but that’d be a lie, as I’ve got no work to do from now until late January, early Feb next year. So.. yeah. I was lazy.

That’s also partly the reason I’ve not really updated much, I’ve not been motivated enough to rant about anything really.

Well, I’ve not really been up to much, I downloaded the SF2HD remix thing demo, and I hated it as much as I hated SF2 10 years ago, so I guess I won’t be buying that. Honestly, I’m no expert but I can’t see the appeal in Street Fighter. It strikes me as a flawed and shallow game. I prefer games with an actual combat system that involves more than just HADOUKEN HADOUKEN HADOUKEN HADOUKEN HADOUKEN. I also really dislike games where you block by holding back. There’s also no counters.. to be honest, the only 2D ‘anime’ styled fighting games I can think of that I’ve enjoyed and liked, are some random Guilty Gear game I had and JoJo’s Venture. Why? Well, JoJo’s Venture has a fighting system that is logical. You can’t just spam super moves over and over. You need to balance out getting your super bar really high so you can pull off an awesome combo (like the ZA WARUDO STEAMROLLA DA!) or keeping it low but pulling off more specials. Stands are also pretty interesting, balancing using it for extra offense but meaning they can hit you from further away and crap. Plus, the characters are awesome. SF has generic characters, but hey, everyone plays Ryu or Ken anyway so who cares. Oh, and I’ll just throw in that Guile is based off a JoJo character. Of course, Guile isn’t nearly as awesome as Stroheim. Then again, JoJo probably has severe balance issues, but I wasn’t talking about balance, I was talking about the actual game engine. Capcom should make JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure HD, that’d be awesome.

Oh, I also left my mic recording for over 24 hours, which explains why my comptuer was running so shitty. You’d be suprised at what a mic running in my room can pick up. It’s mostly music from my speakers, but there’s the bit of me playing Gears 2. Which includes me grunting, shouting, screaming, and generally being like “RESS ME RESS ME OH GOD WHY ISN’T HE RESSING ME”. I’ll also add that I never speak with my mic on over XBL, which is why I shout so much. If my mic was on I’d generally be pretty calm. I tend to get overly excited when I can’t hear other people – there’s also the issue that I’m really hyper.

Yeah I think that’s enough postage for now. You want more?

Yeah yeah yeah?

Kill yourself.

Stage 1-2 “I think I preferred it back where I was”

The blog heartily turns one year old today.

Of course, I wasn’t going to let that go un-noticed.

TAKE THIS, STAR-FINGER.

Expect a proper update later.

Thank you for reading, yes – I am number 1.

FUNimation

I was sort of hovering on the edge of ranting, here, but I tried to remain reasonable, but.. that didn’t work either so this is sort of a semi rant.

Okay.. I’m sure I’ve covered this before, and it pains me that months later I have to touch on the same issues.

So what’s the problem? Anime comes out, fansubbers translate it and encode it and release it, they don’t get paid to do so, there’s no profit involved for them. Yet on the other hand they are releasing copyrighted products and they do not have the rights to do so. That’s also a fair point, now, here’s where the issue is. Can you enforce one countries copyrights, world wide? Assuming you can, is that fair?

So basically, FUNimation have taken it upon themselves to, well, to be honest I don’t really understand, as they haven’t actually got the liscense to dub shows in the US, however they somehow have acquired the rights from the Japanese distributors or something, and are now sending C&D’s out to fansubbers like crazy. Fine, okay, if you partially own the rights or whatever, of course you’re entitled to do so. However, this is where the problem starts, when the same fansubber/s release a text file translation of the script of the episode.. can you stop them releasing that? I would say no. That’s utter bullshit. That’s like trying to sue me for going:

A sound “soul” resides within sound mind and sound body.

Can you sue people for doing that nowdays? Good luck with that you complete cretins. That’s literally all people are doing, releasing a script like that so people can mux it into their own videos (obtained ELSEWHERE) or indeed, you can argue people just read it to see what’s happening. Honestly it’s childish and pathetic the lengths these companies go to stop people enjoying the releases. Gee, why do you think people get fansubs in the first place?

????

Well, I’ll tell you, BUT AT A PREMIUM PRICE OF £10 PER WORD. By reading this article you agree that you shall pay the author, myself, £10 a second for the rest of your life. Okay? Good.

Essentially, when there’s a choice between:

• DVD releases which cost £15 for 3 episodes
• Worse quality than TV encodes if you buy a boxset due to terrible compression
• Awful voice acting
• Bad translations
• Takes months, or more likely, years, to release after the original.

and

• Free, yet it doesn’t “support the industry”
• Quality varies from bad to essentially perfect, depending on the RAW
• Original voice acting
• Translations not done by google translator
• Takes anything from 12 hours to months, depending on who’s doing it, what they’re doing, and the motivation involved.

Gee, that’s a pretty tough fucking choice you utter fools.

Honestly, why should I pay £15, give or take, for -3- episodes of a series. Not only that, do I get any bonus features? Nope. Do I get superior quality to the TV encodes? Nope, unless I buy a blu-ray version, and I don’t fancy paying an extra £10 for that considering I don’t have a blu-ray player. Do I get a well done dub? Nope. I’ll touch on that next however, do I even get a competant translation/subtitles of the original dub? Nope. I get subtitles of the dub. For the record, dubs often change things to become alot more retarded. YOUR DRILL CREATES HEAVENS =)

Okay so onto the dubbing scene. What’s the issue? I’ll tell you what the fucking issue is, it’s AMERICANISED AND IT’S FUCKING AWFUL. No matter if it’s a game, animated movie or anime series. I CAN HEAR THE SAME FUCKING VOICE ACTORS IN EVERY SINGLE ONE. You want an example? Nero from DMC4, Ichigo from Bleach, Renton from E7, Lelouch from CG, and Yukimura from SW, TO NAME BUT A FEW. They are all voiced by the same fucking person. It pisses me off to no end, why are there so few voice actors? I struggle to believe there’s a shortage of people who want to become them, BUT WAIT, IF YOU WANT TO BECOME A VOICE ACTOR YOU HAVE TO HAVE TRIPLE DEGREES IN MATHS, SCIENCE AND SOCIAL ENGINEERING, AS WELL AS 10 YEARS EXPERIENCE AS AN ACTOR, DOHOHOHOHOHO. No wonder there’s only 10 voice actors in America. That is one of the BIGGEST ISSUES of dubs and I know it may seem like my caps lock key is FUCKING BROKEN, but that’s because, IT IS.

To drive home a point, these awful American companies aren’t doing what the consumer wants. That’s NOT HOW YOU DO BUSINESS. I’m going to say that again in big shiny letters in the chances that some dickwad from FUNImation somehow finds this.

NOT HOW YOU DO BUSINESS.

NOT HOW YOU DO BUSINESS.

NOT HOW YOU DO BUSINESS.

You’re meant to cater for the consumer, supply, and demand. If they want episodes of Soul Eater, ready to stream/download/rent, 24 hours after the TV show airs, that’s what you fucking give them. You don’t give them a shitty quality dub 2-5 years after it aired. IF I HEAR THAT FUCKING POWER RANGER ONE MORE TIME…SONUVABITCHSONUVABITCHSONUVABITCH.

I mean come on, it’s not like it’s an EXTREME and unheard of situation in the business world. It’s very simple. S u p p l y    a n d    d e m a n d. Perhaps the company manager of FUNimation should look that up on wikipedia or something.

Okay so idiots aside, what should they do?

Well, here’s an example.

You offer the American consumer a subscription. Of varying tiers, of say.. I dunno, $10 a month. What do you get for this $10 a month? You can stream (in high quality, I must add) up to 3 shows of your choice. So then maybe $20 for 6 shows and so on, you get the idea. These episodes would ideally come up within 24 hours of the initial air-date. So you’re paying about $10 a month for 4 episodes a month of 3 seperate shows. That seems fair to me. Or heck, maybe just make it pay-per-view. Whatever! There’s tons of possibilities. Yet that is what you have to do to taken seriously, and not just regarded as a huge faceless company that doesn’t give a shit about the consumer.

‘Cos, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, that is what companies like FUNimation are. You then have to consider that your average anime-fan is 13-16 and watches Naruto. To them you are the reincarnation of the devil. Yet if they can spend mummy or daddy’s money every week/month to get their episodes of Naruto, they’ll suddenly be fine with it.

At times I struggle to comprehend how dubbing companies have not done this before, but considering they are Americans, and called their company “FUNimation”.. yeah, that reminds me.

However as it stands, you can be sure that I, at least, won’t be buying your releases of Soul Eater. I’ll just figure out a way to learn nip and translate it myself.

Now of course, you might think I’m getting abit over dramatic here, and maybe I am, but to be frank, I don’t really care. Watching anime (and reading manga) is a form of past time entertainment that I enjoy. Alot. Indeed, I would say I spent almost equal time watching anime/reading manga as I do playing games or reading books. The thing is, video games as a form of entertainment, whilst they still have a long way to go, and casuals to beat down, have come a long way, and do not suffer the retarded problems anime does. Okay.. maybe KOEI games do. Yet hey, at least they don’t charge me £50 for Empires/XL. Even KOEI are slowly slowly learning. Books.. yeah books are kind of fine.

I can only hope that way in the future, entertainment will have reached a better place than it is today. People will be able to head home from work in their teleport-o-trons, and heartily power up their 120,000,000″ display, and sit down to watch the new episode of Dragonbleapiece, before turning on their X-station 9 million and playing some Metal Gears of Halo 2050 Super Delux Edition.

In short, American anime companies can go ram dicks into their eyes, I’m not giving them my money.

Also, for the record, I -did- buy Akira, E7 and Cowboy Bebop. You know why? Because they were well priced, had the original audio, and in Cowboy Bebop’s case, had a DECENT dub. Ontop of that they were all amazing shows/films, and I felt like SUPPORTING THE INDUSTRY YEAH.

PS, I’m fairly sure that at least 50% of profit that the eleven’s get from their anime franchises, are from merchandise. Then again, 90% of all anime is shit.

And 10% of all my stats are made up.

Well, in other news, nothing is happening really. I felt like the blog needed a good rant to fufill my quota. Although, sadly I’m not as lucky as some people are and I don’t get paid to blog..yet.

I assure you I am working upon finding a sponsor. Hey, if talentless assholes like Yahtzee can get paid to speak fast and whine about how he sucks at every game in existence, maybe I can get paid to rant fast about how everything in existence generally sucks.

My ego is transcending history, and the world.

Goodbye for now.

Oh yeah, Gears 2 review soon probably.

GTAIV DLC / DW6 Empires etc

Hmm, so the GTAIV DLC has been announced finally, to quote Kotaku:

Johnny is a very different character than Niko, with a very different background. I can’t go into too much detail on the story, because we try not to give away too much plot before the game is released. But I can say that the story will show you a different side of Liberty City.

The USA Today report also says the expansion will “let you download more sandbox time”, Houser elaborating “We feel like we’ve only scratched the surface in terms of the depth and detail in [Liberty City]“.

Ehh..if it’s just extra story stuff I doubt I’ll be getting it, if it adds anything interesting to the multiplayer (like vehicle spawning cheats in free mode, for example, please?) and so on, I might get it. More info will come out soon I imagine.

Then there’s some DW6 Empires news, well, nothing amazing, looks like it’s gonna have CAW back, which sort of excites me until I remember how bad the old CAW was. Now, if it was halfway as detailed as SCIV’s CAS and had some new weapons.. I’d be interested. Will I get Empires? Maybe, I’ll wait and see what more is added to it though.

Hmm.. the NXE is here, it seems pretty neat I guess…just..meh, I think Avatars are pointless. I also got a bit confused by them adding 1680×1050 support, when it still has black bars. I don’t like playing letter boxed games, besides, there’s literally no difference in the games I tested from 1280×1024 widescreen -> 1680×1050, I guess it’s cos the xbox renders at 720p/1080p etc which is a 16:10 resolution, and 1680×1050 is 16:9, or the other way around, I don’t know/care.

Other than that.. it’s okay I guess. No real big change. 8 player parties will be nice, though.

And awayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

Also, best trailer ever: (ALSO SUBS FUCKING WHERE?)

PILLS HERE

Alternatively, an excuse for me to post more hilarious/awesome JoJo stuff.

That is a very serious scene. JoJo is more FABULOUS than Lelouch.

Also:

..and finally.

PILLS HERE.

Something about that video tickled my obscure sense of humour and I found myself laughing at it pretty hard for a good minute. Just the thought of Louis or whatever his name is soaring around screaming PILLS HERE PILLS HERE PILLS HERE PILLS HERE PILLS HERE PILLS HERE PILLS HERE PILLS HERE PILLS HERE whilst heattily machine-gun-slapping zombies with his gun, and then inquisitively trying to do the same to a Witch, which looks unimpressed for a split second before slapping him across the floor with a one hit kill.

Quite.

I kill chickens with my bare hands, eat them, and then put their feathers in my hat.

http://www.peta.org/main404.html

I know that’s a 404 page, just read it. I fucking laughed heartily.

If there’s ever a Peta event/protest or some such thing nearby where I am, I’ll go sit nearby and eat a huge bucket of chicken, whilst explaining how delicious it is and wearing a leather coat with fur trim.

Honestly, it’s not even worth wasting the effort to type up a rant about how deluded these poor people are, so I’ll leave it at that.

Quantum of Solace review

Ah.. so Quantum of Solace eh? I think this review will be shorter than most because.. well, it’s not a long series, it’a a 1:30 hour movie.

Quantum of Solace (2008) is the 22nd James Bond film by EON Productions, released in the United Kingdom on 31 October 2008 and in North America on 14 November. The direct sequel to the 2006 film Casino Royale, it is directed by Marc Forster, and features Daniel Craig’s second performance as James Bond. In the film, Bond battles Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), a member of the Quantum organisation posing as an environmentalist, who intends to stage a coup d’état in Bolivia to take control of its water supply. Bond seeks revenge for the death of Vesper Lynd, and is assisted by Camille Montes (Olga Kurylenko), who has her own vengeance issues.

Story

To be honest, I didn’t really think much of the story in Quantum of Solace, it seemed like an unorganised clusterfuck of “what the shit is happening?”, there’s this huge amazing organisation known as Quantum (there may be spoilers here, be warned) with agents in seemingly every high level goverment agency across the world, they have people in the M16, CIA and to quote Mr White “everywhere”. So.. this organisation then somehow gets found out by Bond almost by luck in some random opera event? Right. Oh, and then in the end it turns out to be just some random person who wants water and such. Which brings me onto a rather retarded point, so he wanted to sell the person water from the land he bought off him.. and threatened to kill him if he didn’t? Why didn’t he just threaten to kill him for money, and keep the water? That makes no sense at all. Overall I thought it was a rushed and.. well, bad story. Oh sure it tried to be deep with its “hur hur there is no right and wrong we just need oil” but just taking stuff from the news and awkwardly smashing it into your script =/= deep or interesting. Oh yeah and they liked to pretend there was the element of Bond getting “revenge” for that ho from the first film who killed herself. Yeah they pretty much just ignored that and crammed it in the end as if they forgot about it.

Characters

I think Daniel Craig did an alright job as Bond, certainly different from all the other Bonds, more “realistic” you could say, but.. well.. I don’t really know how to put this. Perhaps in the books (which I do have, they are behind me in fact, I’ve just never read them) Bond is alot more realistic.. but in the films, he isn’t. He’s an OTT character who is quite frankly ridiculous. He has absurd gadgets, absurd luck, and for some reason women fall over to sleep with him. Craig’s Bond is in a more “realistic world” thus there are no gadgets, but he’s still some ridiculously overpowered human who can somehow defeat 3 MI6 agents with his hands cuffed in the closed area of a lift (which let me tell you, is nigh impossible), and then the fact that all the women he meets are apparently huge sluts, just seems quite frankly ridiculous in the supposedly more “realistic world”. It may seem like I’m coming off overly harsh, but as I’ve said before I prefer to dwell on the negative. That’s not to say I didn’t like Bond, I think Daniel Craig did a pretty good job with what he had to work with. As I mentioned earlier though, his character really didn’t grow in a believable way through the film. He starts off grumpy and ends up grumpy, just with a slightly better restraint (aka he doesn’t magically kill everyone). Still.. it didn’t really feel like Bond. If you took out the tuxedo and British accent, he’d just be Jason Bourne. ‘Cos to be honest, it did feel alot like a Bourne movie to me. I’ll touch on that later though.

The other characters were forgettable, there was a generic villain who they foolishly decided to make as generic as possible in order to make him realistic/believable/highlight the hidden evil in society or whatever, that’s all well and good, but he had nothing that made him a remarkable villain. He looked normal and was just a generic “yeah I have no personality whatsoever and want money/power etc”. There was also the french guy or whatever, who was like a quadruple crossing scallywag. Felix from Casino Royale who had the “grr I don’t like what I’m doing but I’ll do it anyway” cliched role. Then there was this weird European girl who I think was trying to put on a spanish accent or something, hell if I know, she was so tanned I thought she was African at first. Theeeen there was the only character who’s named I actually remembered as I found it funny, “Strawberry Fields”, who was some random M16 person Bond slept with, and then she promptly died. Logical. Oh right and then there was M.. seriously I did NOT need to see her on a 1000000 foot screen rubbing scream on her really old and wrinkly face.. come on.

Everything else

Gee, what is there to say. Whoever directed it was awful. As I mentioned earlier, it felt alot like a Bourne film, as the action scenes

INSISTED

ON

CHANGING

CAMERA

ANGLE

EVERY

MILI

SECOND

AND

GIVE

ME

A

HEADACHE

sort of like that, I really really really despite action scenes when they just spazz the camera around like WOOAH LISTEN TO THE VISCERAL CRUNCH AND SMASH AND SO ON. It just means you CAN’T SEE WHAT’S HAPPENING AT ALL. Now, I think that style sort of worked in the Bourne movies.. just not in a Bond movie. I think overall the director tried to make it too realistic, but then overlooked the fact that Bond somehow pulled super-human abilities out of his ass, along with super-human endurance. Overall I thought the worst part of the movie was the camera work and directing, there were a few shots that really didn’t fit at all, I have to admit I don’t really know the right term for them, but I’m going to go out and say “matrix style long panning shots of a short moment of action”, they just really didn’t fit with the style of the film, maybe in Die Another Day, where we have cars that backflip off ice and white koreans with crystals in their faces etc.

To be frank, I didn’t really think it was that good a movie. Much like Code Geass R2, it was entertaining to watch, but really not that good. Like a cheap action movie you watch on TV with Arnold M8nigger in. It tried to be deep, failed, tried to evolve the character and failed, tried to be realistic and failed, tried to be a Casino Royale.. and failed. Casino Royale was good, this was not.

Then again.. I cba to give it a score out of 10, so I’ll just say if you want to see it, feel free. Just don’t expect anything amazing. Oh okay if you forced me to score it out of 10, I’d give it a 5, whereas I’d give Casino Royale (in comparison) a 7 or 8.

What next? You tell me..

Uh

Just a quick note, I’m suddenly getting a ton of comments that are seemingly handwritten, which are little more than adverts for generic website B. Sadly they get through the spam filter, and as I have to approve every comment.. I’ll admit I’m getting a tad disparaged seeing 12 new comments, and then 11 of them are “hey check our website out!!!” and one is actually relevant to the article.

I’m not really bothered by it tons.. it’s just.. I really, really, really don’t like ads. If I wouldn’t put ads on this blog to generate revenue, I certainly wouldn’t let them on for free.

(There were 12 paragraphs more of this, but around paragraph 3 I went off on the most bizarre tangent and started discussing an army of lucozade powered trolls invading Sweden.. sooooooo I figured I’d cut that out to make this relatively pointless post hopefully make sense)

(Also, expect a Quantum Niggering Solace slosher review some time during this week)

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure

…is fucking awesome.

That is all.

Farewell.

Wheel of Time Movie

..a whole series, and a game series to accompany it, and an MMORPG planned.

Holy crap do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want do want.

http://kotaku.com/5084228/big-game-plans-for-robert-jordans-wheel-of-time

This is very exciting news, I’m going to pray that they make it an amazing adaptation.. if it was news of an anime adaptation to a movie I’d not be happy. Yet.. WoT could be an amazing movie series if they get the right people behind it. Like me. HINT HINT LET ME DIRECT IT YOU FOOLS. I’LL DO IT FOR FREE.

I really hope this isn’t  all gonna be a half-arsed effort, especially the MMORPG.

In short, want. Alot.