Chapter 2 is up!

I had to completely overhaul large portions of this chapter, wasn’t happy with it the first time and spent all day rewriting and rewriting.  Its a bit more graphic than my last chapter with more foul language, but it fits what I had in mind for these characters in my novel.  Orcs!

Dragonball Z: Battle of the Gods

Bitch, please!

I just got to see this film on the big screen here in Korea and I was blown away by the sheer amount of love that went into the movie and just how awesome and amazing it looked while still capturing everything I love about DBZ.  The cinematography was top notch for an animated film, and the battles were…whats the word I’m looking for…starts with an E…hmm…I know! EPIC! It was what I wanted out of a new DBZ movie and so much more.  The choreography was spot on, not so much of the fast hands and rapid blocking we got used to in the later sagas but no-frills actual martial arts reminiscent of the old school Dragonball manga/anime.  It wasn’t about power levels and they consistently said throughout that being a God was about more than power it was about so much more, true transcendence.  Bills was a welcome addition to the cast and fit right in with the rest of them as in several scenes he just simply sits down, eats, drinks, and parties with the rest of the crew celebrating Bulma’s 38th birthday.  My Korean is good, but I had problems directly translating a lot of it, but yet it was an amazing journey back into a favorite series from my childhood.  I do hope Akira does make good on his wish to continue the series in Manga form, the ending left me wanting so much more.  I was so glad I could see this in theaters, although I wished I’d seen it IMAX, it was definitely created with IMAX theaters in mind, I can’t stress enough how beautiful it was as an animated film.

Epic Scale: 9/10

it didn’t get the full 10 because the ending leaves you hanging wanting more and theres no certain future for it yet.  If it gets picked up for a new series, boom! 10/10 lol.

HD Remixes: Why I buy them and why I’m an idiot for doing so

Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD remix comes out next month and I couldn’t be more excited.  Along with all the bells and whistles, it’ll be a completely remastered version of a game I loved playing and haven’t played in a while.  The franchise has exploded with all manner of spin-offs, prequels, sequels and the like but replaying the core franchise with some extra content should be a great way to spend time in the coming months as I will find myself having a lot more free time during my transition out of the military.

oh my god…nerdgasm imminent!

However, Kingdom Hearts isn’t the first and it certainly won’t be the last in a long list of HD remixes that have come out so far.  There have been a slew of collections and HD remixes that have come out over just the past year and I’m not ashamed to admit I own quite a few.  That doesn’t stop me from being an idiot, I just love me some gaming. The fact is though, I’ve played most of these games before, beaten some of them to death and I still rebought them just because of the shiny new wrapper.  That’s really all you get with some of these HD remixes.  Sometimes, not often, you’ll get some revolutionary new feature or some additional content and that’s awesome, great, do it more! Really, please do it more? yeah just like that…mmm…what? Anyway, the more likely scenario is that you’ll end up buying an HD remix and end up with the same game you played years ago, with all the “amazing” “innovative” gameplay and controls from an earlier era of gaming and if you’re anything like me you’ll find it cringe worthy.

Killzone…now in HD? maybe?

I’ve so far gotten the Sly Cooper, Ratchet and Clank, Jak and Daxter, Killzone, Devil May Cry, Silent Hill, and the Ico/Shadow of the Colossus HD packs and so far only the latter has impressed me any and that’s just because I had a fancy 3D TV and could slay massive stone constructs by repeatedly smashing them in the head shouting, “O, Happy Dagger, This is thy Sheathe!” in 3D!!! However, out of them all not a single one offers anything in the way of new content so although I can now fully appreciate the terror of Pyramid Head rape in full 1080p, I’ve seen it before and it would’ve been nice to get maybe even a theater mode at least instead of a direct port of the same games.  Often times its more or less a reshading with some smoother pixels as well.  Ratchet and Clank in HD still looks like an early era playstation 2 game, its just smoothed out and there are many times where you can see the layer of gloss laid over the ancient game design of yesteryear and it can actually look worse than the original in those aspects.  The effect is jarring and sometimes makes it hard for me to continue playing a game I loved playing.

you can’t stop rape with bullets!

Most of the time I can overlook graphical errors and glitches, its all about the gameplay right? The sheer fun of repeatedly thwonking nameless enemies over and over again and collecting little trinkets and spending hours awkwardly thrusting my sword at demons…oh wait thats not fun, thats terrible! The control mechanics for the original Devil May Cry were awesome…until I played the more recent editions and realized that what I’d been doing earlier was more akin to smashing my face into a dinner plate instead of bringing the food up to my mouth with a fork.  Games have come a long way in a short time and the same repetitive tasks and fetch quests we used to just accept as a part of gaming, have become almost taboo and can ruin a gaming experience.  Stepping back and taking a good hard look at some of our favorite “classics” might cause one to realize, those games sucked! I’m fully expecting the same out of Kingdom Hearts HD remix 1.5, now with extra cheese and jalapenos.  There has been so much innovation in the franchise that I can’t imagine trying to replay the first one with my ability to flip kick Heartless into the void they came from while zipping around the screen bouncing from lightpost to lightpost shooting lasers, without feeling some form of buyers regret.  I love what they’re doing, and the HD packs have allowed me to go back and pick up classic games I missed out on(silent hill 3) or  replay an old favorite I never finished(Ico).  The bottom line is you get what you pay for, and the price is manageable, at least they’re not charging the full $50 for a game I played already.  Just so long as they don’t intend on just Remaking everything instead of creating something new, otherwise things are going to stagnate for those franchises.  And lets be honest sometimes our “Classics” are only classics because we remember them fondly the way they were back then and to drag them back out in the limelight, throw a pretty dress on them and scream “Look everybody remember this one! Look at those polygons now!” can cause us to lose that bit of our childhood nostalgia.  All that aside, at least maybe now those games can get exposure and the new generation of gamers can actually see what once was before complaining that the new Devil May Cry is shit and that the old ones were better without completely talking out of their ass.  I’m gonna go watch the HD remix trailer again and sigh…9 more days.

(in my best falsetto)SIMPLE AND CLEAN IS THE WAY THAT YOU’RE MAKING ME FEEEEEEEEEL TONIGHT…!

Stay epic!