Arctic attack!
Sanae has assists.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Sunday, July 26, 2009
To Aru Majutsu no Index
Unpolished gem.
This is the term I'd use to describe this series.
I previously got to episode four and stopped because I only heard it got worse and more awkward, but now that I'm resuming it I'm finding something.
For all the completely awkward and hilarious dialogue and somewhat rough feel about the storyline flow there's genuinely likable characters and interactions in this show. I remember someone joking about the second heroine standing on a bridge for twenty minutes but honestly I was sort of moved by that entire episode. It feels like this show could have used more just general description of the worlds and magic/science crap involved and who all the people you see are (I assume the novel does this), but I feel it's doing an ok job.
Cycles through stories pretty fast actually, given the initial slow movement. I find it amusing the title character got reduced to a gag fairly quickly! I wonder if the major plot device after her arc was put there for convenience so that BiriBiri could become the second main character.
Touhou 12.3
Standalone? SWR expansion.
Three new idiots.
Well Sanae isn't really an idiot, just sort of...new at the whole Youkai hunting thing.
The other two however...
Oh god I do not relish the inevitable flood of Cirno scrubs.
Honestly that is the only thing that would make return this game, crushing 9000 Cirno scrubs from 4chan or wherever.
Also gift has announced three more plushies in their Touhou line.
I thought since they did most of the SDM cast they'd move on to Perfect Cherry Blossom in order, but seems like I was wrong.
Eight is Sanae??? nine is Cirno (boo), tenth is Suwako.
They really are keeping their regulation of each pair only gets one character with a removable hat deal.
Also I just realized they purposely made Cirno number 9 on their release order.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Evolution 2009
Thursday:
Mazui.
Arrived around noon, seemed like Dippy and Arizona (Tempered, Dan, not Choco because he is poor) weren't coming till four. Fuck. Atomic picked me up and I just went to SK/DS's room to put stuff temporarily.
Bionic Commando.
Fuck this game, seriously. Fuck SK too. It took me something in the vicinity of two hours to beat that dumb ass challenge stage (Stage 40 it seems) and I wasn't allowed to eat. Atomic left and picked up Rob and fubarduck while I was falling into spikes. Why the fuck does which way you face change which way you bounce, you're not even jumping you're just bouncing on air vents. At least I beat SK in versus 5 to 2 in the end, you're only good as your last win! Hold that L to your chest. Come see me at NEC. Then went with Atomic and Rob and Colin (kilikabeast, from Florida) to Target to get stuff. Rob bought like 9000 slim jims. Also played BlazBlue with Colin's three day Arakunein Heartnana's room. Proved that I sucked by running into every cloud that existed and not knowing midscreen combos. Endured Rob taunts.
Friday:
Osoi.
Blaz Blue. (And sfiv pools)
Went zero and two (Tager then Hakumen), I honestly shouldn't have lost either match but whatever I have to really start playing this game instead of Vanguard Princess. Speaking of which we had our own poverty corner, scared Chibi away in Vanguard Princess, beat up Rob's Kurumi. Realized that Kurumi/Juliette (a la Tempered) is fucking annoying as shit to fight against because damage race is even worse from random 60% off of assist. Played a random Malty appearance in sadamp, jobbered it up. Played bellreisa later in sadamp, did not completely jobber it up. Blaz Blue signups took forever and the tournament ran forever I honestly played one match, waited three hours, and played my second match. Met Veteru (wtf he's not asian), Mike Z and Rendered (Mike Z's stick died midway and Rendered was using it so I lent them mine), pulsr, Ken (JP guy, Litchi player, inspiration), Mizuki (not as emo IRL) and much of the old crowd (ultracarl, tenkai, hfblade, soniti, spiritjuice, hellmonkey, xie, robotshardz, etc.) Heartnana was getting tight because of how late the tournament was running, needed more DQs. Then Goryus (USA SBO qualifier, uses v-13) put him into losers. I got tight from that. Least he fought his way out and beat Goryus on the big screen to win the entire thing. Team #arcana screaming shit the entire time. Jan (Tager!) got third and rather impressed Rob by taking it to the last round. I admit I was a little worried. As for pools in real games that no one poor cares about, a lot of people didn't make it out of pools. DS for one, fubar, nestor, some others. Night was Vanguard Princesssssss in our room. Tons of it. I taught Shardz day 1 Ayane combos and strategies and he was good to go.
Saturday
Freego.
SFIV pool war. Completely merciless, everyone left is out for blood. I probably actually watched this more than the Blaz Blue team tourney because I thought team Fubarduck, Jan, and Heartnana would take it free. Seems like I missed Mike Z killing Heartnana, though Fubar cleaned up afterwords (2:8 matchup or something terrible for Tager:Carl) Team poverty (Nas, Chibi, HFBlade) got OCVed by XIE of all the random clowns to lose to :3 Surprised to learn Goryus team lost to Veteru's team, seems like VetCoast secret weapon (Wuku Rachel) OCVed everyone up to the finals. For SFIV, watched Arturo destroy Mike Ross but lose to Marn (NOOO), Andre beating the shit out of Watts, Daigo losing a game? to a Chun player but winning in the end, Li Joe getting Juiceboxed, etc. On another note I met Lilyes/Teresa finally after something like six years. It's really odd when you've known someone for so long but haven't met them. Dumb sibladeko time is that I got my hair cut like right before Evo and bought some hair gel (which I never use) for this meeting, only to realize you can't take gels with you on the plane. Now I have a huge tube of useless hair gel. Oh well. BB team finals was postponed till Sunday. Our little poverty corner got owned up by Mister Wizard insisting that four laptops hooked into the outlets would trip the breakers when we were surrounded by 500 TVs and consoles. Missed the 5on5 exhibition because of hunger. At night we went to SK/DS room and played some SERIOUSLY terrible games. There was this Samurai Champloo game that was utterly horrible, this 3D garou game that was utterly horrible, Tekken 1 which is utterly horrible, ok let's just say SK has tons of really terrible games and he somehow knows combos in all of them.
Sunday.
UMEHARA GAAAAAA.
Finals in everything. Missed GGAC finals, heard the nice guy won. Missed Soul Calibur 4 finals, heard that Hilde was not in top 3! Surprise. Missed Tekken 6 exhibition, some Law player won (according to my boss, who actually was watching the stream and actually plays Tekken.) Saw HDRemix, got to see Sirlin use his rebalanced characters and lose. Afrolegends beat Choi in a series of really close matches. Saw Marvel, which was fucking ridiculousss, Sanford came out of losers to beat Justin Wong in two sets. Justin actually pulled a time out victory in Marvel of all games. Yipes got third, Empire Arcadia top three sweep. Blaz Blue team finals Heartnana destroyed Veteru's team. I think pulsr made quite a few mistakes though, he dropped at least two throw combos among some other things. SFIV was amazing, though most of you probably know the results now. Sanford beat Dan from Japan with Cammy, Ed Ma went Zangief (and lost) to Justin, Justin pulled out Boxer and beat Daigo a set out of losers 3-2 before losing 2-3 in the second set. It's hard to do justice to those matches and I think Evo is cracking down on removing the videos from youtube, but try and find them if you can! Everyone had to leave the next day so we just played really terrible games in heartnana's room. Do you know there is a fucking Morning Musume fighting game? I used some girl who threw a dog (that hit low!) as a projectile and dropped trains on people for a super. I was doing pretty well against Rob too! Also played little battlers ex, whose characters are based on Little Busters. Broken game full of infinites, I don't get why Rob kept dropping his combos on Mizuki but never once dropped that shit on me. We saw Rob off to his flight around 5-6AM and along the way ran into Arturo randomly on the Gold Coast lobby. Turns out there was a reason Arturo wasn't salty about losing in tournament to Marn and Sanford and not making top 8; it's because he was one of two people to beat Daigo in a money match, 5-4.
Anyway yeah I delayed on this post forever so lots of details are cut but oh well.
Mazui.
Arrived around noon, seemed like Dippy and Arizona (Tempered, Dan, not Choco because he is poor) weren't coming till four. Fuck. Atomic picked me up and I just went to SK/DS's room to put stuff temporarily.
Bionic Commando.
Fuck this game, seriously. Fuck SK too. It took me something in the vicinity of two hours to beat that dumb ass challenge stage (Stage 40 it seems) and I wasn't allowed to eat. Atomic left and picked up Rob and fubarduck while I was falling into spikes. Why the fuck does which way you face change which way you bounce, you're not even jumping you're just bouncing on air vents. At least I beat SK in versus 5 to 2 in the end, you're only good as your last win! Hold that L to your chest. Come see me at NEC. Then went with Atomic and Rob and Colin (kilikabeast, from Florida) to Target to get stuff. Rob bought like 9000 slim jims. Also played BlazBlue with Colin's three day Arakunein Heartnana's room. Proved that I sucked by running into every cloud that existed and not knowing midscreen combos. Endured Rob taunts.
Friday:
Osoi.
Blaz Blue. (And sfiv pools)
Went zero and two (Tager then Hakumen), I honestly shouldn't have lost either match but whatever I have to really start playing this game instead of Vanguard Princess. Speaking of which we had our own poverty corner, scared Chibi away in Vanguard Princess, beat up Rob's Kurumi. Realized that Kurumi/Juliette (a la Tempered) is fucking annoying as shit to fight against because damage race is even worse from random 60% off of assist. Played a random Malty appearance in sadamp, jobbered it up. Played bellreisa later in sadamp, did not completely jobber it up. Blaz Blue signups took forever and the tournament ran forever I honestly played one match, waited three hours, and played my second match. Met Veteru (wtf he's not asian), Mike Z and Rendered (Mike Z's stick died midway and Rendered was using it so I lent them mine), pulsr, Ken (JP guy, Litchi player, inspiration), Mizuki (not as emo IRL) and much of the old crowd (ultracarl, tenkai, hfblade, soniti, spiritjuice, hellmonkey, xie, robotshardz, etc.) Heartnana was getting tight because of how late the tournament was running, needed more DQs. Then Goryus (USA SBO qualifier, uses v-13) put him into losers. I got tight from that. Least he fought his way out and beat Goryus on the big screen to win the entire thing. Team #arcana screaming shit the entire time. Jan (Tager!) got third and rather impressed Rob by taking it to the last round. I admit I was a little worried. As for pools in real games that no one poor cares about, a lot of people didn't make it out of pools. DS for one, fubar, nestor, some others. Night was Vanguard Princesssssss in our room. Tons of it. I taught Shardz day 1 Ayane combos and strategies and he was good to go.
Saturday
Freego.
SFIV pool war. Completely merciless, everyone left is out for blood. I probably actually watched this more than the Blaz Blue team tourney because I thought team Fubarduck, Jan, and Heartnana would take it free. Seems like I missed Mike Z killing Heartnana, though Fubar cleaned up afterwords (2:8 matchup or something terrible for Tager:Carl) Team poverty (Nas, Chibi, HFBlade) got OCVed by XIE of all the random clowns to lose to :3 Surprised to learn Goryus team lost to Veteru's team, seems like VetCoast secret weapon (Wuku Rachel) OCVed everyone up to the finals. For SFIV, watched Arturo destroy Mike Ross but lose to Marn (NOOO), Andre beating the shit out of Watts, Daigo losing a game? to a Chun player but winning in the end, Li Joe getting Juiceboxed, etc. On another note I met Lilyes/Teresa finally after something like six years. It's really odd when you've known someone for so long but haven't met them. Dumb sibladeko time is that I got my hair cut like right before Evo and bought some hair gel (which I never use) for this meeting, only to realize you can't take gels with you on the plane. Now I have a huge tube of useless hair gel. Oh well. BB team finals was postponed till Sunday. Our little poverty corner got owned up by Mister Wizard insisting that four laptops hooked into the outlets would trip the breakers when we were surrounded by 500 TVs and consoles. Missed the 5on5 exhibition because of hunger. At night we went to SK/DS room and played some SERIOUSLY terrible games. There was this Samurai Champloo game that was utterly horrible, this 3D garou game that was utterly horrible, Tekken 1 which is utterly horrible, ok let's just say SK has tons of really terrible games and he somehow knows combos in all of them.
Sunday.
UMEHARA GAAAAAA.
Finals in everything. Missed GGAC finals, heard the nice guy won. Missed Soul Calibur 4 finals, heard that Hilde was not in top 3! Surprise. Missed Tekken 6 exhibition, some Law player won (according to my boss, who actually was watching the stream and actually plays Tekken.) Saw HDRemix, got to see Sirlin use his rebalanced characters and lose. Afrolegends beat Choi in a series of really close matches. Saw Marvel, which was fucking ridiculousss, Sanford came out of losers to beat Justin Wong in two sets. Justin actually pulled a time out victory in Marvel of all games. Yipes got third, Empire Arcadia top three sweep. Blaz Blue team finals Heartnana destroyed Veteru's team. I think pulsr made quite a few mistakes though, he dropped at least two throw combos among some other things. SFIV was amazing, though most of you probably know the results now. Sanford beat Dan from Japan with Cammy, Ed Ma went Zangief (and lost) to Justin, Justin pulled out Boxer and beat Daigo a set out of losers 3-2 before losing 2-3 in the second set. It's hard to do justice to those matches and I think Evo is cracking down on removing the videos from youtube, but try and find them if you can! Everyone had to leave the next day so we just played really terrible games in heartnana's room. Do you know there is a fucking Morning Musume fighting game? I used some girl who threw a dog (that hit low!) as a projectile and dropped trains on people for a super. I was doing pretty well against Rob too! Also played little battlers ex, whose characters are based on Little Busters. Broken game full of infinites, I don't get why Rob kept dropping his combos on Mizuki but never once dropped that shit on me. We saw Rob off to his flight around 5-6AM and along the way ran into Arturo randomly on the Gold Coast lobby. Turns out there was a reason Arturo wasn't salty about losing in tournament to Marn and Sanford and not making top 8; it's because he was one of two people to beat Daigo in a money match, 5-4.
Anyway yeah I delayed on this post forever so lots of details are cut but oh well.
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
GET HYPE GET GET GET ICHI NI MASEN?
I get Blazblue on THURSDAY.
So instead I'm playing THIS:
It's free too, you know you want it poverty fans!
So a more thorough rundown, this game surprised me.
For one thing is it really unique and different.
First off, if you mash in this game you will lose hilariously and all the anime girls will laugh at you.
There are almost zero chains and almost zero 2-in-1s (special cancels).
No mashing ABC for three hits here, you'll get nothing.
Instead, the system has you heavily rely on your assists to fill in the gaps.
In fact since everyone is relying on rather situational assists pretty much every combo out of an assist setup requires link timing.
Some characters have target combos (very specific chains), everyone has tons of command normals, some people can chain jabs, and I think two? characters have actual 2-in-1s off specific moves.
So yeah your assists, you have one of four (with a hidden fifth), and they basically are an extension of your character, rather than an assist.
Playing this game without using your assist is like say, playing a one button version of a normal fighting game, it won't work.
They make up for your lack of chains, they make up for your lack of 2-in-1s, they can also do some really fucked up shit like guard for you (stupid mixup) or alpha counter or cast gravity pits or curses or projectiles or other wacky effects.
As for the character I was trying out, she is one of the lucky two characters to have a 2-in-1, hers is into her rekka.
She can also actually chain her 5AB, so 5AB rekka is the break and butter here.
Throw in the Yayoi (shoto) assist and you get the loops you see here.
Because she's closest to a normal fighting character as you'll get in this game, she has some really good loops and combos.
Unfortunately she takes a lot of damage, plus her combos don't do that much.
Comparatively, sword girl one does like 75% off a one assist zero dizzy 6 hit into super combo.
Oh yeah, the characters.
Well obviously this is moe bullshit.
It's extremely well-drawn well-animated moe bullshit though.
You have Yui: Sword girl 1 (fucking powerful, long ass range, stupid damage)
Haruka: Wand girl (keepaway, reflectors, funny crossup)
Lilith: Vampire loli grappler (holy crap setups for tick spd off anything and everything, damage absurd)
Luna Himeki: Gun kata plus Gurren Lagann Yoko (actually needs a flowchart to understand as after she goes into a stance just pressing a direction changes it, it's really confusing if you have no clue)
Kurumi: One move joke character that's not a joke (her assist recharge is insane, plus she has a target combo, she only has one special move but her normals feel really fast)
Saki: Sword girl 2 (If Yui is Ryu then Saki is Ken)
Kaede: Waitress (I believe she has a 2-in-1, fast mobility, has some pretty screwy loops, slow assist recharge)
Natalia: Pilebunker (I know nothing about this character yet except she has a pilebunker)
Eri: Tonfa loli (Also has a 2-in-1 into her rekka, low damage and life, stun loops)
Ayane: Bow girl (Setup character, not too sure about her either)
So instead I'm playing THIS:
It's free too, you know you want it poverty fans!
So a more thorough rundown, this game surprised me.
For one thing is it really unique and different.
First off, if you mash in this game you will lose hilariously and all the anime girls will laugh at you.
There are almost zero chains and almost zero 2-in-1s (special cancels).
No mashing ABC for three hits here, you'll get nothing.
Instead, the system has you heavily rely on your assists to fill in the gaps.
In fact since everyone is relying on rather situational assists pretty much every combo out of an assist setup requires link timing.
Some characters have target combos (very specific chains), everyone has tons of command normals, some people can chain jabs, and I think two? characters have actual 2-in-1s off specific moves.
So yeah your assists, you have one of four (with a hidden fifth), and they basically are an extension of your character, rather than an assist.
Playing this game without using your assist is like say, playing a one button version of a normal fighting game, it won't work.
They make up for your lack of chains, they make up for your lack of 2-in-1s, they can also do some really fucked up shit like guard for you (stupid mixup) or alpha counter or cast gravity pits or curses or projectiles or other wacky effects.
As for the character I was trying out, she is one of the lucky two characters to have a 2-in-1, hers is into her rekka.
She can also actually chain her 5AB, so 5AB rekka is the break and butter here.
Throw in the Yayoi (shoto) assist and you get the loops you see here.
Because she's closest to a normal fighting character as you'll get in this game, she has some really good loops and combos.
Unfortunately she takes a lot of damage, plus her combos don't do that much.
Comparatively, sword girl one does like 75% off a one assist zero dizzy 6 hit into super combo.
Oh yeah, the characters.
Well obviously this is moe bullshit.
It's extremely well-drawn well-animated moe bullshit though.
You have Yui: Sword girl 1 (fucking powerful, long ass range, stupid damage)
Haruka: Wand girl (keepaway, reflectors, funny crossup)
Lilith: Vampire loli grappler (holy crap setups for tick spd off anything and everything, damage absurd)
Luna Himeki: Gun kata plus Gurren Lagann Yoko (actually needs a flowchart to understand as after she goes into a stance just pressing a direction changes it, it's really confusing if you have no clue)
Kurumi: One move joke character that's not a joke (her assist recharge is insane, plus she has a target combo, she only has one special move but her normals feel really fast)
Saki: Sword girl 2 (If Yui is Ryu then Saki is Ken)
Kaede: Waitress (I believe she has a 2-in-1, fast mobility, has some pretty screwy loops, slow assist recharge)
Natalia: Pilebunker (I know nothing about this character yet except she has a pilebunker)
Eri: Tonfa loli (Also has a 2-in-1 into her rekka, low damage and life, stun loops)
Ayane: Bow girl (Setup character, not too sure about her either)
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