Posts Tagged ‘video games’

Effect of Mass

Tuesday, September 27th, 2011

So, hi. Both because Boss is singing its praises in guild chat and because of voice actor nerdery (and Jessie Monster prodding me over Twitter), I looted the first Mass Effect and slapped it on Blastoise. I was going to hold off until I finished at least the capture part of my .hack//REPLAY youtube project but… you know what they say about curiosity. I’m a few hours into it as of this posting.

Yes, this is another instance of Yoshi being stupidly late to the party. Are we surprised? Hell no!

Anyway… I like it. It’s not something I’d have ordinarily picked up sight-unseen (in fact, I vaguely recall there being a bit of drama about the DRM when it came out, which might have turned me off at first), but this is one of those games where you stick your finger in and something happens and you’re all “I am intrigued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your magazine.” It makes me think of… a smattering of things, really: a bit of Metal Gear, Star Trek, Metroid and dare I say it, *PlanetSide.* I am particularly amused by how directing the flow of conversation is handled; it’s very… subtle and natural. I dunno.

And, ya know what? Despite all the promo videos and such that pimp out dude!Shepard, everything I’ve seen so far ingame suggests that the story was meant to play out with lady!Shepard. :P While I’m not one of those hardcore feminist gamers, I will admit it’s kind of awesome to play a female protagonist who looks like she could be over-30. (Seriously, look at most games that let you customize your avatar… I am extremely hard-pressed to find one that lets you make anything close to “middle-aged woman,” yet you can still make an old guy.) I think my only complaint about the character editor was the lack of anything resembling long hair, though given that you’re often in full body armor, it wouldn’t have been practical on a graphics level anyway.

Oh yeah, VA nerdery. No shortage of that here. Play as lady!Shepard and… oh hi, Jennifer Hale (as in, Sheena and Samus to name a couple). :D! And, of course, Liara = Ali Hillis (sup, Lightning!*). There are some others in here, but those two are the first to spring to mind. :D

* You want to see something really trippy and meta-y, especially if you like FF4/13 and read voice actor Twitter in character? Watch her tweet at Mr. Liam and Mr. Yuri. One of these days I’m going to crack and draw Lightning flirting with Kain and Cecil over beer and it will be AWESOME. XD

Semi-related: Blastoise’s rebuild is happening in November, if he can hold together that long. For one thing, his first incarnation was “born” in early November. I built Yggdrasil in November, too (2 years ago)… and last year, I got Dinah the MacBook the week of Thanksgiving. So, may as well do the rebuild then, ya know? :P Of course, I imagine the holiday sales for parts will likely be starting up, too, so that helps in the “keep things under $700 if possible, with $1000 as a hard limit” department.

(Instant Ramen Sketchbook) Tales of Moon Puppets

Monday, June 27th, 2011

Tales of Moon Puppets
I finished it. I put off eating most of my dinner (tasty Jack in the Box) until I finished coloring this and… yeah. Ever had some weird brainworm of a VA reference/crossover scene just… embed itself in your head and not let go? That’s what happened here.

And it wasn’t until I was nearly done coloring Luke that I realized there was something that could have been even funnier– Cecil vs. Snow, each dual-wielding puppets (Luke/Alex and Yuri/Ghaleon), which would have REALLY been a three-way clusterfwegh. I’m such a voice actor nerd. :D

For the rest of you, who are all “WTF is going on here?” This is the worst voice actor reference/crossover gag Ramen ever. :D Tales of the Abyss‘ Luke with a puppet of Lunar‘s Alex (and both are voiced by Yuri Lowenthal) up against Tales of Vesperia‘s Yuri with a puppet of Lunar‘s Ghaleon (both voiced by Troy Baker). Why yes, I’m quite aware that all the fans of the original Lunar VAs are now going to demand my head because HOW DARE I acknowledge the recasting for the PSP version, and that only a few people will get this, and I don’t care. ^_^

NEXT~!

Codec Moment

Monday, May 16th, 2011

As if Microsoft buying Skype isn’t already silly enough, now we have a new video chat service, “AV for AIM.” Despite what the name says, you don’t even need to have an AIM account or anything. Huh. It can go to up to 4 users, where Skype is capped at 2 before it starts charging, so this might be something to consider for upcoming shenanigans. :P As it stands, it kinda looks like something out of Tales’ skit interface. Hah!

I feel I need to drag back out an old video chat wishlist item I’ve been sitting on forever and could very well be feasible now: Someone needs to rig a Metal Gear-like Codec skin for this! I don’t care what flavor (well, all Codec variants would be ideal… I’m partial to the Codec used in MGS2). It’s just a matter of repositioning the video windows, tossing a filter on ’em and the text chat would go underneath.

Painter 12 appears to indeed be maximum no-suck. I’ll just, uh, wait for deviantArt to spam my PM inbox with promo codes and what-have-you for Painter 12, because we like not having to pay full price. Among the new stuff that’s been added, Kaleidoscope Mode looks like it’ll be stupid amounts of fun– could be useful for making magic glyphs and such! PNG support is also yay (it actually appeared in 11, but, again, 11 sucked so much I ended up going back to 10).

I should transfer to Blastoise to ramen it up, but this big orange troll over here insists I pet him right now or else he will sit on me. :P

We are an Angry Birds Mob!

Thursday, January 6th, 2011

As a followup to the other Angry Birds post… it’s now on the new Mac App Store (as in, the one for OS X users, not iOS). Naturally, it’s been looted and plopped on Dinah, so even ninjas can pop the greedy pigs, too. Only the Wii/DS and Xbox have yet to been invaded by killer birds, but I imagine that will happen soon enough.

I’m packing the PC, PSP minis and now the Mac versions in addition to the iPod Touch. Sadly, there is no way to sync your progress between versions, so put such a notion out of your mind right now.

PC version is a wee bit unstable at the moment, though its crashiness can be mitigated greatly if you update your video drivers if you’re behind. Also, yes you can force windowed version by playing with its config.lua file in the program directory.

PSP minis, despite the name, can also be played on the PS3 if you so wish. I’ve yet to do that, opting instead to play on my PSP-3000. It autosaves right before you get your score, which is slightly annoying but tolerable. I don’t know if you see the same autosave screen when run on the PS3.

Mac version handles almost exactly the same as the PC version, as far as the whole “click and drag to shoot” thing goes. That said, if you’re playing on a MacBook with the touchpad, it’s just like playing on the iOS. Maybe it’s me, but the Mac version looks the best of the three… I wonder if its originating from the iOS (which, after all, is a fun size version of OS X) has anything to do with it…?

Also with the arrival of the Mac App Store? A possible, albeit temporary replacement for Painter. Autodesk’s Sketchbook apps aren’t new– they’ve been on Windows for awhile, and also the iOS, but with the opening of the App Store they’ve rolled out a Mac version, and in two flavors. There’s the free Sketchbook Express, and, for now, the $30 Pro version. While I am loathe to use anything other than Painter for my art posts (ew, Photoshop), it would be nice to have something to tide Dinah over until Painter 12 hits. I’ll play around with the Express version for now and loot the Pro version if I think it’ll be a nice fit.

I’ve had the iPod Touch version, which is awkward because of its size. (Really, drawing apps for the iOS are much better suited for the iPad, you have more space to work with in there.) But to run Sketchbook on something laptop-sized might be a much better experience.

Birds, birds everywhere… also fire

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

Man… this is freaking Angry Birds week. No iOS device or Android phone? No problem, anymore! If you have a PC (ideally a netbook, but it’ll work on anything running Windows XP or 7), you can loot Angry Birds for $5 through Intel’s AppUp store. It looks like you get the first four episodes off the bat– Episode 5 may either appear after clearing Episode 4 or could be patched in later. *shrug*
Despite what Intel says, you CAN force it into Windowed mode if you edit the config.lua file in the Angry Birds program directory– simply set the fullscreen setting to “false” and it will launch in a much more manageable window. You could even play with the resolution if you were so inclined.

If you have a PSP or a PS3, on the other hand, you’ll be able to loot Angry Birds later this week as it will be hitting the PSN store as a PSP minis. I don’t know how much that one will be going for, but PSP minis games are supposed to be less than $10.

I’m looting both, because… it’s Angry Birds. It’s kinda like how I own nearly every version of SimCity and Final Fantasy 4 (in the case of the latter, released in English). I imagine it’ll be drastically different experiences between the mobile, PC and console versions since you have to account for different trajectories when launching the birds….

Also? This is totally not helping to work on my ramen backlog. XD; I suppose I can get away with playing just a little…


OH… if you happened to catch yesterday’s NSFW, you might have seen this thing flashed during the opening. Yes, that would be my shenanigans and tomfoolery… done on EXTREMELY short order at the challenge of the chat room. It killed both hosts with lulz, and got me at least a dozen more Twitter followers, woo! (Episode reference @ BBPedia: [link])
Don’t worry too much if it doesn’t make any sense– at the very least, it is always funny to see other people done up like Beavis and Butthead.

You’ll be able to see the episode again tonight, as it’s being replayed at 7pm PST on TWiT Live. :D Now if you excuse me, I have some pigs to bomb.