I B Scribbling Madness

So I haven't exactly been blogging as normally as I have in the past few months, just because there has been so much going on in my life lately. I wouldn't know where to start and where to finish. Then again, there has been so much going and yet nothing at all really. Does that make sense? I suspect not. Anywho...

Tried to buy Scribblenauts today.

Tried.

Failed.

One thing I hate about a little store called Toys n Joys is they do not keep a very updated website. It surely says nothing about the game being sold out and everything just looks so fine and dandy that I wouldn't even throw a doubt of suspicion their way. I mean why would I? They are a small store and I wouldn't think it'd be that hard to write in "SOLD OUT," could it?

Well damn it all, apparently it is and I wasted a trip up there for nothing. Blah.

So after having to turn down their little offer of placing a "special order" for it (which will come in on either Monday or Tuesday, WOW unhelpful that is), I just bought it for in-store pick up at Best Buy. You think they'd find it funny if I ask them about those $10 TVs?

Probably not...

But back to the scribbles! I am intrigued by this game, I am just agog by the promise of it all. And how could I not be? It practically gives the player the freedom to throw damn near a lot of things to complete the tasks before you. Laser gun? Check. Tank? Most likely. Coffee shop? So I've heard!

And get this: I may actually pass up games like Halo 3 ODST just to get a hold of this one. I can't believe I typed that! Give up a console game for a handheld one?! Madness! Blasphemy!

Speaking of handheld games, I kind of fell off the boat with Dissida Final Fantasy. I bought it, I played it for a little while and...

Why did I buy this game again?

Truthfully, I don't really even like the selection of characters in the game (or at least the folks sided with Cosmos). They are so irritating to me! I wish you could actually choose to play as the forces of Chaos from the start, just to be able to smash those whiney sons of you-know-what into the ground!

I think I would rather see something like this in on a larger scale, just to give a better variety in characters. Hell, it might even help make the game a lot more playable. Overall I just didn't and couldn't really give a care about this all that much. Huh, another PSP game that I lost interest in in under a week...

Jumping to the big consoles, I played the demo for Katamari Forever the other day and I am a little interested. Perhaps a little less then I might have originally been. Don't get me wrong, the game looks pretty nice visually and it plays just like it did in the original game. But to me it feels like it has finally fully lost the charm the original games had. It doesn't seem all that insane, the tone of it just feels... like a game?

Maybe the full game will show the weird and craziness I grew to love about the series. I actually played the game more because of the weird music it had, which was much more enjoyable for me then the game itself sometimes.

Last thing here... I finally finished Mass Effect and I just don't know what to think about it. The ending was okay, certainly not the best one I've ever seen. Kind of lame really. But then they were/are setting up for the sequel, so I suppose it is to be expected. I am hoping that the levels will be better designed. I felt like I was in the twilight zone, running through the same place over and over and over...

I guess the best I can hope for is that playing through this will make the second game more interesting. I am curious to see how the choices made in the first game will actually impact the second. Will it end up being that big of a deal?

Half Confirmed!

So after weeks and months of maybes and a lot of speculation, Square Enix has finally announced the release date for Final Fantasy XIII! I couldn't believe that the date has finally been confirmed!

Well, it is only confirmed if you live in Japan and/or plan on importing the game...

Now it has been said that FFXIII will be released in Japan on December 16th, 2009. What about the US and the rest of the world? Apparently they are still "aiming" for Spring 2010. So really, nothing is confirmed at all. Hardly a solid answer, but I suppose that this has to be considered the best answer out of SE thus far.

What I am hoping is the years of development it has taken to get this game together will result to something phenomenal. I mean the last numbered Final Fantasy game was FFXII back in 2006 after all. And maybe I am hoping the series does not sell out what made it great: great story and great characters.

But at the end of the day, I suppose all I can do (unless a demo happens to see the light of day here) is sit back and await the game's release. Whenever that might be...

Not Going to the Asylum!

Despite what I've read online and even with a number of my co-workers getting the game, I have not gone out and picked up Batman: Arkham Asylum. Perhaps I'm just jaded over a game like this. I mean I remember falling for the hype around last year's Prince of Persia. And how did that work out? In the end, I did not enjoy playing that at all.

And I know that this game is something like the highest rated Superhero game ever. Congratulations there, I suppose. Considering how many times Batman (amongst other superheros) have had games made based on them, which failed is just insane in my mind.

Or maybe it is just not my type of game? I mean I've played Grand Theft Auto 4 and I didn't care for that all that much either.

Ultimately, however, my decision to stay away fell onto the fact that I did not come away from the demo of this game feeling all that impressed. I didn't feel like I was playing something so incredibly awesome or anything in that sense. Maybe I need to play the game with all of Batman's gadgets and nick nacks to really get the full sense of the game. But then that would be a little sad wouldn't it? If the gadgets made the game, rather then enhancing it.

But don't get me wrong though. I did think this game did look interesting from the get go. It is much darker and certainly much more serious. It looks like it might even be packing a decent story in there, which is a huge selling point in my view. But like I said, coming away from the demo I surely wasn't feeling all that impressed over what I played through.

In any event, unlike the madness that I got to experience last year, I have to say that I'm definitely going to be much, much more skeptical about the games being released this holiday season. I am surely not going to be spending like a madman on everything that just looks interesting or cool to me. And, as things are going right now, it looks to me like Batman: Arkham Asylum is the first to fall to the wayside as far as I'm concerned.

Hell, truth be told I am actually more interested in Scribblenauts then anything. Now that sounds interesting...

Bad Movies

Generally speaking, I tend to try and keep an open mind while watching movies. I'd like to enjoy any movie I watch, rather then pick them all apart for what they did and didn't do well. However, these past few weeks have brought upon me a number of terrible movies. The kind that made me wonder what in the hell could I have thought in buying/renting them?!

Let's begin.

First up is a movie called "Cool Dimension." Now the description of the movie sounded good enough to me: A trio of female assassins kill whomever their master commands them to, without a second thought or even a question. Then one day, one of these assassins suddenly starts to regain some lost memories and all hell breaks loose. Sounds good, right?

That is exactly what I thought about it until I started to watch it. About 15 minutes in and I began to have that feeling like I had just made a mistake.

These "assassins" don't really kill much of anyone and their fights surely doesn't make them come across as real bad asses either. Granted, it appears as though this was a Japanese indy movie and so it wouldn't be the best of the best, but come on.

The story itself is scatter brained at best, most times things are just hopping here, there and everywhere. Best of luck in keeping up with everything, because there are elements in the movie that are in there just for no apparent reason. For example, just out of randomness I suppose, there was a sex scene thrown in and it had to do with the boss of the master of the three assassin girls. What did the scene have to do with the assassins, the overall movie or anything? Not a damn thing.

It was irritating, as it was stupid and I regretfully wastes $15 in getting this "movie." Lesson learned right? Hardly...

Now this one I thought there could be no wrong done on it's part. And considering I never played through the end of the third and final volume, this would help piece together the rest of the story for me.

What was impressive of this movie was the look of it all. The backgrounds, the characters, everything was just beautifully done here. I thought they had just rehashed the cut scenes from the game, but I was wrong. The job done here was awesome!

And that is where my praise ends for this movie. Now maybe if you never touched any of the games in the G.U. series, the movie wouldn't be all that bad. However, if you were like me and went in expecting to see the whole story retold in the form of a movie, you will be disappointed.

Basically, without ranting about this for the next three months, the story was butchered to the point where the only characters to appear was Haseo, Ovan, Aina (Ovan's little sister), Yata, Azure Kite, Atoli, Shino, Pi, Kuhn and Sakaki.

As for all the other supporting characters and the like, NO ONE ELSE APPEARS. The Canard guild is a no show, same goes for the Moon Tree guild as well. That alone takes a large portion of the story away. Overall, this basically leaves behind a story without meaning, because of how the story was originally structured, the absense of these characters bascially destroys any reason to really give a shit about Haseo.

Needless to say, the movie left a bitter taste in my mouth and furthered my regret in not finishing the game myself. I could go on and on about this one, but I just won't do that. I will just say again... if you've played the games through and expect to see something similar to the game's story, you'll end up very disappointed because the results is nothing even close to it.

Lastly, is a movie I just endured last night and it was just too much for me to handle. It is called "An Empress and The Warriors."

For me, my only real interest in seeing this movie was because of Donnie Yen. The last movie I had seen of his was Flash Point and he was a pretty damn good action guy.

This, however, didn't leave me wanting to watch it over again. I am actually surprised I watched it through to the end in the first place.

I was going to write out a long, drawn out bitch fest about this, but I thought I shouldn't. I will simply say that this, according to the director, is suppose to be a more action oriented movie. What it came out to be (in my eyes) was a romance movie with a little bit of fighting here and there.

What is worse is the romance parts are cheesy and so badly timed that it just ruins the flow of the story. It surely killed any care I had for the characters, that's for certain.

So at the end of the day, I spent most of the month of August watching so bad movies. While there were some exceptions, the vast majority that I saw during the month was just plain ugly bad. I guess you can only watch so many movies before you run into a few that you outright dislike.