Friday, January 28, 2011

Grab Bag

So in the news today (or yesterday):

China passing off Top Gun footage as Chinese airplane "training exercises."

Aquapazza/pizza by Examu/Leaf:

Unfortunately it's on Taito's Nazi Online board NESiCAxLive, meaning that State side operators will have about 0% chance of getting the game (fubarduck already shed a single tear.)
Also Manaka attacking anything is just too weird!

India's most expensive (and most successful) film:

Witness the masterpiece Enthiran.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Taxes

So I have two W2s, one pointing toward the normal place and one pointing toward Mauritius.

From Wikipedia:
Mauritius – based front companies of foreign investors are used to avoid paying taxes in India utilising loopholes in the bilateral agreement on double taxation between the two countries, with the tacit support of the Indian government, who are keen to improve figures relating to inward investment. The use of Mauritius as a gateway to funnel foreign investments into India has always been controversial. Mauritius's financial regime has a number of the key characteristics of a tax haven, which has helped to facilitate this.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Arcana Heart 3 is out

<HeartNana> ok
<HeartNana> shit felt PERFECT

And some joy finally starts creeping back into me.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Cosmic Break broke my heart

Sort of delayed, sort of old, but yeah time to post a final wrap-up more or less.
Cosmic Break broke my heart.
I'd be sort of over this if I didn't keep getting asked questions suddenly by IRL friends from the fighting game community.
"Hay sibladeko what's a good build" x9000.
Imagine my face when I have to tell them that they should never spend money on this game because the people running it are insane.
Where were you clowns in the previous betas when the game was actually good?

In short, Cosmic Break USA's insistence that it was "well aware they were dealing with a different market" was pretty much lies.
True they started out with "discounted" prices but they kept the RT conversion the same and once those discounts end it will go back to the hilarious Japanese pricing of 20 dollars for 5 rolls.
And so ends Cosmic Break.
10 dollars 5 rolls.
Not budging on that price point, that's what DFO uses and that's the border of sanity.
It's only fair too given the lack of a trading system and other bullshit the userbase puts up with.
If they had used that price point I'd be flying around with those shiny wings right now with chocolate Lily instead of playing other games.
But no they think 20 bucks 5 rolls will work here.
Even with the discounted rates (16 bucks for 5 rolls! 12 bucks for 5 rolls, almost there but no cigar) have firmly cleaved the user base by 66%.
And hell I wonder how many of those remaining 33% paid?
The few people who have shiny wings all belong to the merged clan of lagging HKers and iHOP called Everything's(Not)Fine.
That and maybe Middle Eastern Prince *******, he has something like 4 shiny wings on an alt.
Truly the saviors of USA Cosmic Break's economic model.

Quite honestly I spend tons of money on stupid shit, I threw 50 bucks at Ougon (HAHA SUCKER), I'm throwing 70? at Arcana Heart 3 limited edition, just to name my most recent examples of excess.
But I refuse to throw any more money at Cosmic Break USA until they change the pricing, which I don't think they will.
It'd be pretty trivial for me to throw 1000s and get overpowered bots like Everything'sFine and rule a dead game.
Except I don't want a dead game, I want a game that can grow, that can thrive, that can survive a balance change instead of having people quit because their 1000s of dollars are now worthless.
Buy in and you basically reward Cyberstep for their idiocy and their desire to kill their own game.

Edit: Oh yeah as for shit people ask me the most:
If you want to be a winner, Redux will help you win.
Tons of problems in the base game...though changing flat garapon price goes a long way toward remedying that.

Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Ougon Musou Kyoku


Is pretty kusoge.
I'm having limited "fun" with it but right now the biggest problems are:
1. Cancel window is retardedly tight and chains actually hurt my hands to do, very mashy game cause of how the command interpreter is.
2. Pressure is extremely linear, the guard meter builds hella fast so there's almost no reason to open someone up, just make them block. You basically block low 99% of the time in this game waiting for the obvious tag overhead.
3. Attacking someone gives them more meter than you.
4. Bursts are omega free, with the amount of meter you get in this game there is no reason NOT to burst. If a game has both sides bursting like 5 times per match there is a problem.
5. Metaworld is staggeringly powerful for certain characters, there is no reason to NOT counter meta if you have the meter and even if they have more meters to redeclare it throws off dash timing like a bitch and shortens the duration of it.
6. Everyone's combos are the same, though I don't mind it that much. No meter combo is 2a5b2b5c tag 2a5b2b5c2c special if you have it. One meter on your main? 2a5b2b5c metaworld dash 2a5b2b5c tag 2a5b2b5c2c metaworld super into dizzy. One meter on your sub? 2a5b2b5c tag 2a5b2b5c metaworld dash 2a5b2b5c metaworld super into dizzy. Ange has limited chains but she has rejumps. Probably one of the more interesting characters in the game.
7. Hitboxes are all over the place. True there is a slash wisp I believe in the actual move, but look at that thing. Same with a lot of the other moves, I think Battler's tie is something like impossible to attack head on.

8. Netplay is disconnecting garbage with no spectate and no way to copy paste IPs in (you have to mash up arrows on the number fields)
9. Limited joystick support, when's the last time I've played a doujin fighter that couldn't realize the directionals on both my pad and stick? Maybe 10 years ago?

Pluses:
1. Presentation is slick as hell, looking at the sprite work confirms this. Plenty of cool in-jokes and story moves as well, the characters really have a lot of their stuff from the sound novels.
2. Music is amazing, although it is in uncompressed WMA!?!?! Lol why is the continue song 2.5 minutes. It's like they didn't care. Plus a 7 minute stage song for a game with a 180 second timer. Do not understand.
3. Voice acting is top notch, everyone sounds in character and the ones who are annoying are annoying as hell nyehheheh (silly rabbit).
4. I really really like the meter system in that you only build meter for your partner. It really does promote the "tag" aspect of the game, however everything else sort of falls, especially of how metaworld is handled. Maybe doing metaworld super ends your metaworld immediately, because at the moment Beatrice has infinite momentum, Battler and Ange have free instant full screen punishes on anything you do that isn't down back, etc. etc.

The game has potential, I don't even want to think of how Melty Blood was when it first came out.
Right now though it's a pretty limited, though gorgeous, experience.