Video games, motherfucker! MOST ANTICIPATED OF 2011

ALRIGHTY THEN, let's talk about the most anticipated games of next year for me, altough to be honest this mostly reflects on the first half of 2010. Also imagine the numbers and titles read in a booming video announcer voice with some digitial effects.

NUMBER T-T-T-T-TEN!
I won't lie, this game is kind of a placeholder. But still, Uncharted 2 was a pretty cool game, altough I didn't like the last levels.
Still, Uncharted is a pretty cool franchise and it's kind of interesting to see a Indiana Jones-like game that isn't shit (see : Tomb Raider).
So yeah, I'm kind of looking forward to this but it's kind of a honorable mention.

NUMBER N-N-N-N-NINE!
Also kind of a placeholder, but more anticipated. This game seems to abandon some of the pre-existing Pokemon formula to try something new, and by all means, let them do it. I look forward to sinking in a large amount of time in this game.

NUMBER EEEEEEEIIIIIIIGHT
DEAD SPACE 2.
Also a placeholder, but eh. This game looks pretty cool. I probably won't get it at launch but I'd play it.
NUMBER S-E-V-E-N
Semi-placeholder, but I want this game. inFamous was a pretty cool game, altough it had technical imperfections, a shitty story, bad character designs and a protagonist that makes me alergic to american comics, but then also it was just a really fun game where I could sort of live out my fantasies of being a motherfucking god of thunder and being a friend of justice just like ma boi Kamen Rider.
When I first saw the trailer for inFamous 2 in E3, I was like ''That's Cole? He doesn't look like a skinhead potato and actually talks like a person, a douchy person, but a person noless? COOL!''
But then they fucked it up by making him bald and more grimdark again. I BET THE PEOPLE THAT LIKE KRATOS DID THIS.

NUMBER SIXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
MARVEL VS CAPCOM 3 : FATE OF TWO WORLDS
To be honest, I'm not the biggest fan of Marvel Vs Capcom. Capcom VS SNK was my prefered versus game (but SVC Chaos can eat a dick).
But maybe the thing that turned me off of Marvel was the fact that MVC2 was so incredibly broken and by the time I got to playing it, it was disected to the bone marrows, leaving no secrets left.
But even shittier is the fact that MVC2 was unbalanced, making only like 8 characters from the 50 character roster viable, and was a game all about the zoning, which is something I don't want to do.
But still, I'll give MVC3 a try since maybe I can actually have fun with this game when it's fresh and the internet is full of new players who have yet to discover broken as fuck combinations like MSP.

NUMBER FIVE
Now here's a game nobody has heard about and probably doesn't really care, but all I needed was this trailer to convince me that I must have this game.

HOTBLOODED GODFIGHTING! CROSS COUNTER! CHOUGINGA GURREN LAGANN-SIZED MECHABUDDAH! ALSO THAT SOUNDTRACK! WHOA SHIT!
It's like they know exactly what I like! FUCKING A
Also I think this CyberConnect2's true coming out party, since all previous games were ether niche RPGs like the .hack series and the Naruto games (which, as we know, the PS3 ones are good games).

NUMBER F-F-F-OUR-R-R-R!
YAKUZA 4! Okay so as we all know, I'm a Yakuza superfan. And this game looks even better than 3. You now get to play as 3 new main characters, each with their own stories and gameplay styles. I played the Japanese demo this February and it was pretty interesting how Shun Akiyama plays with his incredibly fast and fluid kicks (and my guess that he's probably the easiest to play as character in the game). But the other characters are also interesting, Masayoshi Tanimura is a very technical character, Kazuma Kiryu will probably handle the same way as he did in the previous game, and Taiga Saejima, who is strong enough to pick up motorcycles to beat dudes up.
I'm kind of happy I held off importing this game.

NUMBER THREEEEEEEEEEE
DEUS EX : HUMAN REVOLUTION, which I stubbornly continue to call Deus Ex 3. Now neckbeards are complaining about things how they gave it regenerating health and a very brown color palette, and they're also butthurt about Square Enix publishing it.
But now, I'm a man of hope, and I think there is a serious chance this game will be great, just judging by the production values.
Also I really like the Ghost In The Shell-like asthetic this game has.

NUMBER TWWWWWOOOOOOO
MASS EFFECT 2. Now I really want to play the Mass Effect series due to how much I hear about how fantastic it is. Not a lot I can say, but in one month I get to see what's up.

NUMBER OOOONNEEEEE
NINTENDO 3DS! Fucking fantubular, I want to see what the hell is this shit about. I'm not even sure what the launch titles are, I just want to see what the hell is up.

ABSENT FORM THE LIST : FINAL FANTSAY VERSUS XIII, KINGDOM HEARTS 3, PERSONA 5, METAL GEAR SOLID RISING

Video games, motherfucker! BEST OF 2010 EDITION! and misc. achievments

SHINY COIN WITH A HOLE IN THE MIDDLE WITH A STRING TIED TO IT, DANGLED IN FRONT OF A 5 YEAR OLD AWARD FOR BEST GRAPHICS (oh god I sound like such a douche) :
Final Fantasy XIII! I can talk shit about the linearity all night, but I do also think this game had the best graphics out of any game I played. The graphics are really what they promised in the trailers, which is where Gran Turismo 5 failed to deliver. But also since this game doesn't feature any hyperrealistic grime like most of the things that the west shits out.
Runners up : Vanquish, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and Naruto Shipuuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 (which would win if it was BEST CELL SHADING).

''FUCK YES, THIS IS AWESOME'' AWARD FOR BEST GAMEPLAY :
VANQUISH! Vanquish is probably my favorite single player shooter this generation, providing me 6 hours of pure balls to the wall action that was fun and made me better at video games. I never expected to enjoy bullet time ever again but this game made it fresh again, and made it a core mechanic that makes this game super fucking awesome, man.
Runners up : Bayonetta, Pac Man Championship Edition DX

'' AWW YEAH, TURN THAT SHIT UP, BRO'' AWARD FOR BEST MUSIC
And the winner is... noone!
There are a few soundtracks I liked, like Bayonetta's, FFXIII's, Scott Pilgrim and even Fist Of The North Star Ken's Rage had pretty cool. But none of those I would rank as high as I rate, say... Guilty Gear XX... Now maybe I should nominate Panty and Stocking's music?
WAIT
NO
I GOT IT!
SUPER MARIO GALAXY 2! You deserve it, my friend.

''DOGG, SHE WAS WEARING PADS THE WHOLE TIME AND IS ACTUALLY FLAT AS A BOARD'' AWARD FOR MOST DISSAPOINTING GAME
LOST PLANET 2. Okay then, this game was just a letdown. It's, once again, not unplayable, but also not very good. If I can get people to play it with me, it's kind of fun, but alone I refuse to play it, since alone is just sucks analbarf out of a colostomy bag.
Runners up : FFXIII and Gran Turismo 5

''DIGITAL IS TOTALLY THE FUTURE, DAWG'' AWARD FOR BEST DOWNLOADABLE GAME
PAC-MAN CHAMPIONSHIP EDITION DX!
I really have to thank GiantBomb for showing me this game, since the concept of a new Pac Man is like ''what? I can play that on flash, what's the big deal?'', but no. This game reinvented Pac-Man in to a game that makes me feel like I'm tripping balls while hooked up to an IV of caffine.
There's just something oh so satisfying of having a ghost train of 30 ghosts follow you, and then devour them with a power pellet, and how the game becomes faster and faster, and the point count higher and higher as Pac Man eats more and more ghosts in a way that makes me wish it won't stop.
Nonbelievers! Try this game! You'll thank me after that.
Runners up : Super Meat Boy (which I'm not good enough for), Worms Reloaded, Beat Hazzard and the list goes on and on

''VISIONS ARE WORTH FIGHTING FOR, ED WOOD'' AWARD FOR MOST AMBITIOUS GAME DESPITE LIMITATIONS
DEADLY PREMONITION! Okay I might be cheating since I didn't actually play this game, but I did watch the Giant Bomb crew play it start to finish so I guess my point is still kind of valid.
They main asthetics of this game are pretty B-grade. The Dreamcast-level graphics (in the year 2010), the gameplay which copies better games but fails to reach that level of quality. The not so memorable soundtrack, minus, the acoustic track Life Is Beutiful, which I whistle sometimes.
But where this game excells would be it's story, characters and the fact that this game had some ambition to be something more than just another budget title. I daresay the director, Swery 65, who is a poor man's Suda 51 in every sense, had more ambition with this game than any developer working under Activision (blame Bobby).
In fact, I think the protagonist, Franics York Morgan, is the best new character of 2010.
The plot of the game is very much a tribute to Twin Peaks, but is also somewhat remniscent of Shutter Island.
By the end I was invested in the story and it's characters, something that games like Red Dead Redemption, Final Fantasy XIII and certainly not Blops could do.

''TELL ME A STORY, MR.GAME!'' AWARD FOR PLOTS I GAVE A SHIT ABOUT
ACE ATTORNEY INVESTIGATIONS : MILES EDGEWORTH
Okay again it might be cheating since this is a game that's like one step above a VN. However, the Ace Attorney universe is full of interesting characters, and the detective aspect of the game is genuinely interesting and the plot was well written.
Runners up : Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, maybe Yakuza 3

''GAME I THINK IS COOL AS FUCK'' AWARD FOR BEST GAME
Assassin's Creed wins again, and if there's Assassin's Creed III next year then it'll be a hat trick. As much as I love Yakuza and am addicted to Pac Man, Assassin's Creed is my favorite.
Runners up : Yakuza 3, Dead Rising 2, Vanquish

THE ''NOT REALLY AN AWARD'' AWARD FOR GAMES I SHOULD PROBABLY GET AROUND TO PLAYING
So I have not touched my Wii for more than a year but maybe I should dust it off.
Wii games : No More Heroes 2, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Tatsunoko VS Capcom
PS3 games : Demon's Souls, 3D Dot Game Heroes, Blazblue Continuum Shift. God Of War III

TUNE BACK IN SOMETIME LATER FOR TOP 10 ANTICIPATED GAMES FOR 2011

JIKAI MO, TANOSHIMINI!

video games, motherfucker : games I played in the other half of 2010

PART TWO MOTHERFUCKERS! WOO WOOO!

Transfomers War For Cybertron is a game I picked up since I have this genetic disorder that I have to play atleast one not so good game every year.
Despite being a toy collector, I don't have any real fondness for Transformers, Beast Wars yeah, Transformers no.
Really, the reason why I picked this up was since it was the dead of summer and I needed something mindless to chew on until Q4 finally hits.
I don't really reccomend it to anyone, besides maybe hardcore transfags. The game is compitent but very bland shooter with incredibly same-y levels.
The thing that dissapointed me the most is that the Autobot and Decepticon campaigins are identical and there is no real difference betwen any of the characters from ether sides. You get the archtypes of Leader (Optimus, Megatron), the medium-armed guy, the medic and the scout. Also each campagin has one level where you play as flying transformers such as Starscream and Jetfire, but playing as them is forced in those.
But the thing is, the game isn't broken or awfuly designed, it just lacks imagination and actual spirit (kind of like the transformers toyline nowdays).
Also boss battles were horse shit.
6/10

Resonance Of Fate is a JRPG by Tri-Ace, published by SEGA. Now TriAce's last RPG, Star Ocean IV The Last Hope (or something, I forgot) was pretty shitty as I heard. But I picked Resonance Of Fate (AKA End Of Eternity in Japan) and was kind of pleased.
The setting was fairly interesting and kind of reminded me of The Big O (which I just had finished when I picked this up) in a way since it's about an isolated, sophisticated city sheltering people from an apocalyptic wasteland that nobody really knows how it became like that.
But that's about as far as I can tell you about the game's plot since I haven't gotten too far in the game.
But the designs are pretty decent since the people dress like actual people instead of bellends like in anything that Nomura gets his hands on.
The combat system is pretty interesting and reminds me of Valkyria Chronicles with lockon but in a Random encounter form.
If you want to wash your mouth out from the bland taste of FFXIII, I'd say this is the best console JRPG this year.
8/10
Alright, now we're getting serious, motherfuckers. DEAD RISING MOTHERFUCKING NUMBER TWO.
The last game that Keiji Inafune made for Capcom, which was a co-production with Blue Castle Games, makers of the MLB something-something series of baseball games which are supposed to be baller (if you like that sort of thing).
Now I love Capcom, and I know a person who loves it even more. But Capcom's sequels in the past few years were good, but not as good as their predecessors (see RE5, DMC4), and their outsourcement has resulted in some collosal failures (see Bionic Commando 2009 and Lost Planet 2), so Capcom is kind of degrading (see Keiji Inafune's statements), but DR2 and SFIV are evidence that not all hope is lost.
I didn't play Dead Rising 1 since I don't own an Xbox 360, and I didn't play the Wii version since I didn't want to catch poliosyphilis (a disease made by terrorist scientists, combining syphilis and poliomelytis).
Now, Dead Rising is an interesting experience, since it combined two of the otherwise most hated game elements of escort quests and time limits (missing only forced stealth and underwater for a tetrafecta of terrible), but it's implemented in a way that you begrudingly accept since it's a part of the construction that makes the game what it is, and without it there would be no point. Don't expect to be able to beat this game before atleast before a few resets when you get to level 20. Don't expect to be able to beat every sidequest AND the plot, ether.
As a dicking around simulator, it's fantastic, it feels just like Dawn Of The Dead, where you can go around do things in a mall you couldn't do every day, and find various interesting ways to murder zombies.
New to the table, there's the combination mechanic where you can combine two items in to weapons of death. There's obvious ones, like Bat + Nails or Bowie Knife + Broomstick, but there's also some creative ones, like Supersoaker + Gasoline, and some that only the most nerdiest would imagine, like Gem + Flashlight (which makes a lightsabre).
However, a lot of these weapons require scavenging, which takes time, which you don't have. Nailbats and other really common, yet effective combos will be your bread and butter for mowing down zombies, and if you're lucky, some sort of uncommon weapon you can stumble upon.
Also something that bounces between shit tier and WHOA SHIT would be the psychos. The psychos are living people who have went peanutbannanashitsandwich crazy and decided to kill both the living and the dead. My favorite psycho would be the one clearly based off of Chris Chan. I was like ''woah shit it can't be.... can it? OH MY GOD IT IS. ERNESTO, CHECK THIS MOTHERFUCKER GODDAMN! IT'S FREAKIN' CHRIS CHAN!''
''BRO, I DON'T KNOW IF THIS IS AWESOME OR NOT! IT'S FUCKING EMOSAWA! (not a japanese word, but awesome spelled backwards, which means awesome, but at the same time not, invented by me).''
But the bullshit part about the psychos fights is that they're not the least bit fun. There is no strategy or tactic to defeating them. Instead you better just stock up on healing items, stock up on things to bludgeon them with and just tank them. Jesus fuck it's like a boss battle from the NES era or what being a tank in WoW is like, in my opinion.
So yeah, Dead Rising 2... There's a lot to love and a lot to hate. I suggest you pick it up, but I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't get it. The game is very Japanese with it's design philosophies.
Also the game has co-op, but it's jump in jump out and the host is the only one having actual progress, the other player is also Chuck Greene but only gets money and exp. But you know what? I like it. For a game that's meant for dicking around, that's perfect. It's a lot like Saint's Row 2 co-op, which I think is groovypants, but not a miracle of game design.
I give it a 9/10 but you have to put it in perspective.

Casltevania Lords Of Shadow is a reboot by Mercury Steam.
Now take my perspective. I'm a Castlevania fan since Symphony Of The Night and I love Castleroids. So I awaited Lords Of Shadow with some fear, since it's not my cup of tea since it follows God Of War, which you might picked up on that I'm not really a huge fan of.
But judging this by it's own merits, it's actually a great action game. Not very original, but still a somewhat epic quest.
But it doesn't have that much actual familiarity or similarity in tone with other Castlevanias. Castlevania started out ever since the NES as a tribute to monster movies and the horror genre. in fact, the first game's credits have the entire development team credited under campy aliases referencing actual horror icons.
So my biggest complaint is the fact how the game takes everything very seriously, which is something I can't do with Castlevania. Altough it's kind of neat to hear Sir Patrick Stewart narrating everything dramaticly, I just flashback to Oblivion and am reminded why I don't like the more generic western fantasty fiction that much ether. Castlevania has always been a campy joke mixed with my favorite kind of 2D gameplay.
The lore of Castlevania is a joke, but the failure is that they fail to see it as such.
If you want a good god of war-like game with a pretty long duration then get it, but if you're a Castlevania fan, chances are you'll hate it.
Naruto Shipuuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 is an anime game based off of the second part of Naruto, the manga all 12 year olds think is amazing. Now, I have a special place in my heart for Naruto, and I played the first Ultimate Ninja Storm, which I think was the best anime-based game this generation up until UNS2.
A thing I don't know I like about this game more than I liked in the first one would be the world. UNS had a completely open recreation of Konoha (the village/city that Naruto and his friends live in), and it was great because it had great freedom, letting you scale the highest buildings and it was just fun to dick around the rooftops. It was no inFamous or Assassin's Creed, but it was still very nice.
In UNS2, you see much more of the world of Naruto, taking you through several locales outside of Konoha, like The Land Of Wind where Gaara lives, several of Orochimaru's lairs and Amegakure, where the base of operations of Pain and the Akatsuki is located, which is groovy, but the world is mostly just barren corrdors with some collectables and you don't have the same freedom to your movements as the first game in the overworld.
The actual fighting is a lot like the first game, but it's not a rehash, since every returning character has new moves to reflect on their abilities at that point in the series (and original ones for characters with a not so wide list of known moves, like Asuma) and new models to show how they've changed (there are exceptions, like Kakashi and the other jounin, Jiraya, Tsunade and Orochimaru, and members of the Akatsuki present in the previous game).
But the gameplay is still pretty much a button masher, but hey, this is a game you're supposed to drink to and say things like ''hey, remember when Rock Lee fought Gaara?'' or ''remember when Naruto was good?'', not play competetively (something people on Gamefaqs fail to undestand).
The highlights of the game would be the chapter end boss battles against (mostly) the members of the Akatsuki, and these boss battles are standard fights by themselves but feature quick time event sequences that are in my opinion, some of the best QTE I've ever seen, and makes God Of War eat a dick. These sequences do much more justice to the fights than Studio Perriot could ever do with the anime.
The game covers from the beginning of Shipuuden to Naruto defeating Pain, and also has a small epilogue about Sasuke encountering Killer Bee.
This game was the game that reignited my love for Naruto and it's seriously one of the best anime-based games I've ever played, since they tried to make more than just another anime cash in, while still trying to keep it accessable to it's stupid core audience.
Now I'm really interested in CyberConnect2's next game, Asura's Wrath, which makes me think they secretly love me and want to tailor make a game that fits my tastes. (look up Asura's Wrath on youtube and you will have your mind and jaw scattered across the floor).
Also the story mode is pretty robust, clocking in at 30 hours to beat, and still having other things to do. If you want to buy DBZ Raging Blast 2 instead, I will call you a retard and remove your penis.
8.5/10
Vanquish. Okay so you might have read my other post on Vanquish but to be honest I was sleep deprived and slightly drunk when I wrote it. So let's try again.
Shinji Mikami's Vanquish is in my opnion the best single player experience I've had this year. More so, I think this game genuinely made me better at video games. It improved my reactions, aim and coordination. Most importantly, I beat this game in two sittings, which might be a record for me.
Now granted, the game is 6 hours long, which might be a dealbreaker for some people since they want a money to time exchange smaller than 10 dollars per hour (in which case, you should get the aformentioned Naruto or Castlevania). i wish this game was longer, but I also think that the 6 hours I spent were fantastic and I should probably play again.
So I dunno, I'm pretty sure I probably won't convince bros low on money to get it for a price above 20 quid, but for that price I really say you should play it, since it is fantastic. I mean, none of you bitch about the shortness of DLC, so...
The game's climax isn't as good as the rest of the game, though... but I dunno. I really want people to play it.
8.5/10, would be more if it was longer.
Fist Of The North Star Ken's Rage is a Dynasty Warriors spinoff by Koei Tecmo. It takes the cult classic manga and adapts it to an action game. And it's actually a pretty good match, altough Koei Tecmo isn't really a good developer by any means, and this game isn't really ether.
The game is a faithful adaptation of the manga and takes you across the stories of the more important Fist Of The North Star characters, in most cases up until their deaths.
Altough I wished they had incorporated some of the more expanded Hokuto No Ken universe. such as the Gaiden mangas about the other characters. It would have been pretty cool if Raoh had a story mode based off of his Gaiden, which is the most prominent piece of Fist Of The North Star's expanded universe, after Fist Of The Blue Sky, which is a whole other story.
The game isn't good, but it's not broken. I just played it since I'm a fan of the series and it was kind of cool seing a Fist Of The North Star game at this day and age outside of Japan, altough I'd personally prefer a PSN port of the fighter made by Arc System Works.
I don't really reccomend it to anyone, but it's not horrible.
6.8/10
Call of Duty Black Ops is the latest installment in the cash cow franchise by Activision. I bought it mostly since my cousin was coming over and I was pretty sure he wouldn't be interested in playing most of the games I have since he's a filthy uncultured swine.
But I also bought it since I wanted to play some Blops mutli. Now, whenever I buy a multiplayer game, I'll always look for the one with the largest community, so this one automatically became much more favored against Bad Company 2 and Medal Of Honor (lol). I'd prefer Halo Reach to this but sadly no Xbox 360.
I watched my cousin play the single player and I thought it was alright. I should probably finish it some day.
But really, the only reason why I'm weary about CoD is since it's money goes to Bobby Kotick, knows jack shit about actual games and development and only cares about maximum profit disregarding actual artistic value. (eat a dick, mark)
8/10
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood (or Ass is Red Bro Hood, or AssBro) is the direct sequel to my 2009 game of the year, Assassin's Creed 2. Now, Assassin's Creed 2 blew away every single expectation I had about it and I fell in love with it. When I heard they're doing a direct sequel, as opposed to Mark, I was positive, since I was happy that I could find out what happens next to my dear friend Ezio.
And the game is even better than AC2. You have the gigantic city-state of Rome where you can jump around rooftops as much as you like. You have new gadgets made by Leonardo to fiddle with. You have more nigs to stab. You have more ways to stab nigs. There's even more variety and imagination in the missions and mission types. You can recruit subordinates who you can summon at any time to help you stab nigs. There's just so much stuff. Goddamn.
And in this case it's just as much Desmond's story as it is Ezio's.
I haven't beaten the game yet, but I damn sure will.
But I really do think the next game should not feature Ezio, atleast not prominently, since after this his story is truly over.
10/10
Gran Turismo 5 is the last game on my list, altough we still haven't touched up upon the DL games.
So I was anticipating GT5 pretty hard. Am I dissapointed? Meh.
Game is wast and expansive, but also very Japanese in terms of design philosophy (and driving games are where I don't want Japanese-ness). There are too many menus, and they could have been easly optimized and min-maxed in to a lot less button presses.
But the driving aspect itself isn't all too bad.
So the driving aspect itself is really good, but the game around it is not great. This is certainly not a bad game, but even more certainly not the titanic supergame to end all driving games.
Right now I think of Kazunori Yamauchi in the same way that I think of Peter Molyneux.
8/10, but dissapointing.

So these are all the disc based PS3 games I played this, year, I might also do another post on the downloadable games I played.

Video games, motherfucker : games I played in the first 6 months of 2010

As we all know, I play a lot of video games. Let me talk about them. Cool. Also I hope this will lessen the claim that I only talk about Japanese things

Bayonetta is an action game by Hideki Kamiya, the man who made DMC, a game that defined the way action games worked 10 years ago (but did not participate in DMC3 which was the best one).
Bayonetta leaves me with mixed feelings. On one half, the gameplay is good as fuck, I mean goddamn, DMC now feels slow in comparision and also I really appreciate the over the top factor this game has by trying to be insane in ways video games have not tried yet, and I really like the soundtrack since it's pianos are distinct.
On the other half, Bayonetta's character designs, enemy designs, voice acting and the way the characters behave is fucking obnoxious. While it is funny at first when Bayonetta drops those ''oh you naughty boy do you want nanny to give your bottom a good spanking'' lines, but by the 4th hour it really starts to annoy me since that is the only real traits they had given her.
And then there's the silly, silly pretentions to sexuality that the defenders of which like to think that it intimidates the kind of people that play games like Rapelay, but I don't know. When I think of a strong woman from Japanese media, I think Motoko Kusanagi from Ghost In The Shell or Maki Aikawa from Air Master or maybe Claire from Claymore, not Bayonetta.
You can tell me to cry on classic white haired Dante's grave as much as you like, or you can tell me that the gameplay is all that matters. Well, I don't agree. Gameplay alone only mattered back in the Atari days and maybe the NES days when technology wasn't good enough to make actual living worlds to immerse yourself in so they had to rely on the basic instinct of IT FEELS GOOD TO DO THIS. Saying that gameplay is the only thing that matters in games is the same as saying that in a movie, the only element that truly matters is acting and other elements are to be disregarded (which I would argue to be true in old theater, maybe).
Also another thing that messed with my enjoyment of the game was the shit-ness of the PS3 port, which fucked with me hardcore.
Which is too bad since I really looked forward to what is in terms of gameplay the best action game of 2010.
8/10

Yakuza 3 is a game that made me go on a quest to get as much of my nigs to play, since I genuinely think it's Sega's best franchise.
The Yakuza series is the spiritual successor of the Shenmue series, in that it's sort of like a Japanese open world game that prefers immersion over scale.
Actually, I played this game in 2009 after I imported it from Japan (along with Ryu Ga Gotoku Kenzan, the samurai spinoff of Yakuza), but I really looked forward to the western release so I could fully understand what's happening and be able to do things other than the main plotline.
The game lets you play as Kazuma Kiryu, ex-yakuza who runs an orphanage and overall man's man in a truly manly sense (see Gears of War and God Of War's main characters as examples of what 12 year olds think is manly, but isn't quite).
I don't really know how to classify Yakuza, but I suppose the most accurate description would be an action-adventure RPG. The combat is a brawler but there's also leveling up, character upgrading, items and crafting in the mix, altough a realistic take on modern day Osaka and Tokyo's criminal ongoings aren't quite what you think of when someone says Action RPG.
Also the game has a wide range of minigames that have more dept and craftsmanship in them than what you would find in a Wii minigame collection. My favorite one was the billiard minigame.
So overall, Yakuza has an immersive and expansive world that recreates Japan pretty well, and by Japan I mean actual Japan, not animu Japan. Actual Japan with love hotels, perverted salarymen, corrupt politicians, miserable otaku and bars manly with rich, old dirty men soliciting sex from the hostesses and yakuza henchmen forcing out an apology from you if you so much as to look at them wrong.
Yakuza is sort of an aquired taste, it doesn't appeal to the average whitey gamer since all the voice acting is in foregin, but it also doesn't appeal to the average weaboo since it isn't the glorified animu japan they dream of (spoilers : they are just as despised in Japan as they are in the west), with a cast that is entirely ether men around the ages of 30 and + or kids that don't call you ''oniichan'' and ask you to do seemingly innocent things that end up in sex, and the general fact that the modeling is fairly realistic, with not a single hint of animu.
9/10 would play again if the disk wasn't damaged.

Final Fantasy XIII is the analdump that was considered the RPG to save JRPGs before it came out, but was ultimately the bullet in the leg that made Squeenix's stock collapse (and FFXIV was the one that took off the tip of the shaft).
It has fantastic graphics and a really nice soundtrack.
I won't really complain about the cast ether, since while they're not perfect, FF always had semi-shitty casts (don't let nostalgia tell you otherwise).
But the thing I cannot forgive is the lack of freedom in both traversing the world and in the actual combat. Kingdom Hearts had several worlds and gave you the freedom of do whatever you like in them, they were mostly just sections of corridors, but atleast they made you feel like there is a large, expansive universe. FFX (which I might remind you, is the best FF) might have had a turn based combat system, but atleast it had actual tactics instead of MASH ATTACK OH BUTTERNUGGETS THIS MENU IS UNINTUITIVE. Also FFX was composed of mostly just long hallways, but they atleast resulted in the feeling of what was a large, epic quest that took you across an actual world. FFXIII just felt like it was holding your hand the whole time. They say that the game gets better after 20 hours and everything opens up, but by the time I hit 20 hours I could have played (and probably beat) some other game, or an even better analogy : that's like saying it's awesome to have sex with prostitutes after you get over the STDs.
6/10

Pokemon Soul Silver is a remake of Pokemon Gold/Silver, which you might consider redundant, since Pokemon is already a series that is bedfellows with the concept of rehashing. But I digress, I play every one of the main Pokemon games.
But I have a particular connection to Silver since it was the first Pokemon game I played and beat. I have a certain fondness for Red/Blue but I honestly think Silver is the best and the remake of which is groovypants. It's great to reexperience the adventure but it's not quite the same, but then again what is when you're not 10 anymore.
But what I like best about Silver that annoys me about the other Pokemon games is that Silver was the only one to let you revisit the territory of the first game, which is awesome, since it gives you that feeling of ''hey it's cool to be here'', doubles the places you can visit to waste time and the developers don't have to work really hard to expand the game significantly, which is good for both the player and the developers.
8/10
Ace Attorney Investigations : Miles Edgeworth (which was rumored to have the more awesome title ''Miles Edgeword : Perfect Prossecutor'') is a spin off of the Ace Attorney visual novel series. Ace Attorney is the only visual novel series that has continued to keep me interested without a single exposed nipple because of the prospects of having a wank. The previous Ace Attorney game, Apollo Justice Ace Attorney was kind of good but did not satisfy since it pushed aside the beloved protagonist Phoenix Wright in favor of Apollo Justice, who is just like him but not him.

But while Phoenix's story is probably done, there is still one character who is worthy of his own Ace Attorney game, and that would be Phoenix's rival Miles Edgeworth.
Furhermore, Ace Attorney Investigations changes up the gameplay a bit by having you actually navigate the world instead of just clicking static pictures, and also there's the logic system, which has you put threads together to create deductions, which give you a clearer image of what exactly is going on, instead of just have you blindly present evidence without being sure.

The story has Miles Edgeworh joined by his sidekick, detective Dick Gumshoe (might as well call him Cock Condom) and the female sidekick, the kaito (phantom thief) Kay Faraday (who is exclusive to this game so far) (since every Ace Attorney main character has a teenage girl hang out with him). And through five seemingly unrelated cases about a detective being killed in Edgeworth's office, an foregin agent investigating smuggling being murdered on a plane, the son of a millionare being held hostage in an amusement park by unknown assilants, a flashback case in which Miles, Gumshoe, Franziska Von Karma and Kay Faraday were involved and finally the case in which it all shows the full picture of the Yatagarasu case that intervines the entire plot of the game.

A flaw that Apollo Justice had was that it abandoned a large part of the cast of the first three VNs. AAI does a better job. Altough nor Phoenix nor any of the Fey family or any characters directly associated with Phoenix's story don't make an appearance, there is still a fare share of familiar faces like Dick Gumshoe, Franziska Von Karma, Ema Skye and even Manfred Von Karma make an apperance. Phoenix is even given a really well done nod to in a crucial moment without actually mentioning him. Oh yeah and the two comic relief scapegoat characters Larry Butz and old hag Oldbag reappear.
But the new characters are also pretty cool. I like Kay, but my favorite would be Shi Long Lang, the detective from the east, who just leaks Junichi Suwabe(Archer from Fate/Stay Night, Grimjow Jeagerjaques from Bleach)/Kazuya Nakai(Roronoa Zoro), who is just totally awesome, and mostly antagonizes Miles by providing arguments, but at the very end does a clever ploy to help Miles solve the case of the Yatagarasu.
Also honorable mentions to the embassedor of Babahl, who's name escapes me, but he was helpful, friendly and with the best intentions, so in other words, a bro.
Sadly, Ace Attorney games have no replay value unless you play them like several years later.
8/10 will read again

Super Street Fighter IV is the updated version of Street Fighter IV, and an overall better game. Now, Street Fighter IV is my favorite multiplayer game of the generation, and one of the most important games this generation since it single-handedly revived the popularitiy of the fighting game genre, a genre that had not been doing so well since the death of arcades.
And Super Street Fighter IV is an even better thing, adding 10 more characters and expanding the move sets of every character, having even better multi, redoing the anime cutscenes to be less shitty and generally giving more content.
Also a thing I like is that it gave character themes to the entire cast, whereas in vanilla only a few characters had their own character themes and for some retarded reason the composers made unmemorable stage themes instead. And maybe the new character themes not so much, but the rearranges of existing themes are pretty awesome.
I'm most thankful for the addition of Adon, a character from the very first Street Fighter and Street Fighter Alpha, who suits me entirely by being very rushdowning, entirely melee focused, a QCF character and easy to use. In fact, after going from Fei Long to Adon, I had the same feeling as Takumi Fujiwara from Initial D when he drived his dad's Subaru Impreza after spending so much time with the AE86.
Oh and did I mention that the game was 25GBP at launch? Now that's a fantastic deal!
10/10

First true dissapointment of the year, Lost Planet 2 is a mishandled concept that could have been fantastic. The idea was this, co-op alien monster slaying shooter action! Monster hunter like looting! Feel like a badass while slaying giant monsters! Ride mecha!
But they kind of fucked it up with not very good, cluttered controls and a general lack of polish. Which is a shame, because with actual dedication this could have been a really great co-op game.
A lot of people hate this game to death, I personally don't think it's terrible, but a big letdown. It's fun to co-op, but then again everything is.
The online is inhabited by Japanese people who are also probably masters of Monster Hunter. And Monster Hunter, too, is a game that has a great concept, but is kind of fumbled and failed but still adored by the Japanese.

Red Dead Redemption, the new Rockstar game that sweeps all the GOTY rewards. Okay, this game is good, but maybe I'm missing part of the picture. You see, as someone who originates from an ex-soviet country, I didn't see a lot of cowboy movies because they were kind of irrelevant to me both because of age and ethnicity.
This game is... well... kind of boring to me. I'm sure an american could appreciate the arguable authenticity of being able to play around in what feels like a John Wayne movie, but I don't.
Game has a lot to do and the world is expansive, but at the same time it's very slow moving and there's a moral choice system which fucks with me, because on one hand I know that the wild west is most fun when you beat up women, hang negros and shoot people over a game of cards, but at the same time I want to be a friend of justice like ma boi Kamen Rider.
Game is well crafted, but doesn't quite hook me in. If the game had a smaller, but more detailed world like Yakuza, then I think it would work much better for me personally.
Also I couldn't give a shit about John Marston (who certainly is no Ezio) since he was boring and even less a shit about the characters around him and the plot.
But I do still think there should be more history-based games, that is a pretty cool concept.
8/10

Tune back in tomorrow for the other 6 months of the year, with a lot more games.

Anime I genuinely reccomend : A guide to anime that I would argue is good part 1 : Shounen (yo, kitte kure, ningen nante taishta mon ja nai sa...)

Merry Jesus Day. And with that out of the way....

By now you probably have noticed that I like anime and I watch a fair share of it. I do consider myself to know a thing or two, altough you really shouldn't take my word as the law of the land (a comon misconception about anything some retards think about something one has posted on a web page, I'm just a dude, yo).

Now, if there is a word I like to use to describe my tastes, it would be ''Simple''. Simple doesn't mean stupid. Simple doesn't mean ''for children''. Simple doesn't mean ''cheaping out to reach a wider audience''. Simple simply means ''easy to grasp''. Making stories is a lot like describing physics or chemestry, you can go on and on in a tangent about some sort of complex bullshit, by the time I have already used the wifi the classroom has since it's next to the computer lab and have continued reading Achewood, or you can put it in to a few easy to understand sentances, or maybe show me, then I'll be able to understand even the most complicated concepts as long as the rules remain clear.

Shounen!

Shounen manga is generally intended in Japan for like 12 year olds or something, but doesn't mean it's only for them. Shounen Jump, obviously, the magazine that contains most of the most the famous shounen manga. Mangas like Fullmetal Alchemist or Fist Of The North Star or Great Teacher Onizuka have been categorized as Shounen simply since they were published in magazines with Shounen in the title, but I would argue that they're really not, atleast not by today's standards.

Let's start with an obvious choice that some might argue becomes unobvious again due to the obviousness and the fact that it gets hated on. The definitive shounen manga, Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball, the 42 volume manga spanned from 1982 until 1995. It was adapted in to two animes, the first one, Dragon Ball, spanned for 153 episodes and adapted the first 14-ish volumes detailing Goku's childhood up until his fight with Piccolo Junior and becoming a man. It was followed by a 293 episode (edited down to 272 episodes in the initial western release by Funimation) anime that told the rest of the story contained in the manga. It also had several anime movies offering non-canon side adventures taking place in debatable time spaces in the story. It was followed up by the anime Dragon Ball GT, which was made after Akira Toriyama ended the original manga and had a story made by the studio, it was a pretty big failure and a lot of fans consider it non-canon. Recently it was rehashed in to a condensed, remastered series called Dragon Ball Kai.

Anyway, I'm not sure if DBZ really needs any big introduction, since it's one of those anime everyone has heard of. It popularized, if not created a lot of the tropes present in shounen manga, such as the aspect of power levels and how the characters scale according to them, the training thing to become way, way stronger, tournaments, transformations and the way how the inner energy is a plot device to do some superhuman shit. Altough Fist Of The North Star and Saint Seiya also had some of these elements, in them these things were more vague which makes them less definitive.

The story of Dragon Ball is the story of Son Goku, a naive country bumpkin with incredible power, and his adventures that involve the Dragon Balls, ancient crystal balls that can grant you any wish by summoning the eternal dragon Shenron.
Dragon Ball chronicles Goku's life from when he was a kid to when he had grandchildren, when he has fought the baddest motherfuckers in the galaxy, in all of nature and magically possible across the earth, the galaxy and even the afterlife.
Dragon Ball has an expansive cast, altough most of them become irrelevant about at the time when Z begins.

The first 14 volumes were more about the adventure and make a lot of dick and vagina jokes and less about the fighting, and the being stronger aspect was less about how much Ki you have (like in Bleach) and much more about how you can adapt to this situation (like in One Piece or Naruto, or One Piece).
But after the time skip and the introduction of Goku's son, Gohan, the series becomes much more power level and fight centric and it's a lot more about WE HAVE TO SAVE THE GALAXY FROM EVILDUDER, YO! But not all of the charm is abandoned.

Definitive version : highly debatable. The manga is the most straight up version and arguably the best, but the anime adaptation is fine on their own, but they suffer from the two anime STDs of Bad Pacing and Filler, but I kind of like the expanded universe they created with the movies and the TV specials. GT can be ignored since it's not very good. Kai has a superior soundtrack and doesn't suffer from the STDs, but the digitaly edited remastering isn't that good and the voice actors (in Japan) are now all old people and have started not to give a shit about their performances since they're old, maybe not as much the heroes but the villains show this pretty clearly.

Biggest flaw : the translations, continuous arguments over demographic and the totally fucked dubs, and maybe the plot element of powerlevels.

But the things that make it good would be the fact that if you go to it with an adult mind set, you can still enjoy it and see things you wouldn't see as a child, provided that you're not watching the OG Funimation dub.

You still have to appreciate DB for it's historical significance to manga if not for what it is itself, since it defined shounen manga in Japan and was one of the first anime to become really, really popular world wide.

What you can call the true successor to DBZ, Eichiro Oda's One Piece is a still running 50+ volume manga about pirates, who are pirates in the same way the characters in Naruto could be called ninjas, on a seemingly never-ending quest to find the ultimate treasure that the legendary pirate Gold Roger hid at the end of the Grand Line, an isolated ocean crossing the middle of the planet, going from island to island, encountering the inhabitants of them, rival pirates and the world government who want to stop the age of piracy.

The main character, Monkey D. Luffy (everyone calls him Luffy) is a Goku-like weirdo with a big dream of becoming the Pirate King by finding One Piece, a quest that even the mightiest pirates consider nigh-impossible. At first everyone thinks Luffy is crazy or really, really naive, but when he displays his actual power, people quickly stop laughing. Luffy has consumed the Gomu Gomu No MI (Rubber Rubber Fruit), a Devil Fruit which gives his body the elasticity of rubber, which he combines with his monstrous physical power results in making him a very powerful fighter.

He is joined by his crew that he gathers on his journey, his crew is joined by Roronoa Zoro, a swordsman who weilds three swords and wants to be the strongest swordsman on the earth, Nami, the navigator who mostly serves as the voice of reason and provides comical punishment for most of the crew, Usopp, a cowardly sniper who has to constantly face his fears and try to man up in the face of danger, Sanji, a cook who fights only with his legs and fancies himself a ladies man, Chopper, the ship's child-like doctor and freak of nature that is a cross between a reindeer and a human, Nico Robin, an archeologist who spends most of her time not really interacting with the other crewmen and being mysterious, Franky, the fucking awesome cyborg guy who runs on cola, Brook, the ''gentleman'' skeleton with an afro who is no gentleman at all. (also I would like to take an educated guess that Boa Hancock will probably join the crew at some point after her status as a Warlord Of The Sea will be revoked, maybe).

But the things that in my mind makes One Piece in many ways superior to DBZ would be that A : it feels like Oda has a lot of imagination and B : the fact that it never really lets go of the adventurous feel that Dragon Ball let go of during Z.

Flaws : Some people may not like the artstyle. 4kids tarnished the reputation of this series with a god-awful, censorship-filled dub. Some very uneducated people think it's much too kiddie to take seriously.

But the thing that might stop you from enjoying One Piece would be it's ball numbing lenght. The anime has nearly 500 episodes at this point, which is slightly less than DB, DBZ and DBGT combined. Watching all of this would require a massive time dedication. And the manga has 60+ volumes, which is also pretty damn long. And the manga isn't anywhere near it's end anyway.

Now for something a bit more obscure (not that you could truly call anything running in Shounen Jump in the past 15 years ''obscure''), Hiroyuki Takei's Shaman King. It has had an anime adaptation that I've never watched, but I have read the manga back to back.

Shaman King is a pretty typical shounen manga about various characters fighting in a tournament and pretty much every trope established by DBZ is used, but with a ''spirit'' theme. But what made it enjoyable was that the characters were pretty well developed through the series and they and their abilities were quite imaginative.

The story is about Yoh Asakura, a young shaman (the universal word in Shaman King for people who can mess around with spirit based abilities) who participates in the Shaman Fight, a tournament that happens every 500 years where shamans from across the earth fight over the right to use the power of the Great Spirit, which is pretty much god, to change the direction in which the future will go and fufill the winner's wish.
Yoh himself doesn't really desire anything, since he acts like he's stoned all the time and doesn't really need anything. However, Yoh's twin brother Hao Asakura, who is quite possibly the strongest Shaman on earth since he commands the Spirit Of Fire, wants to wipe out humanity so nature could rule over the world again. So Yoh's quest to win isn't quite ''I want to make my dream come true'' as much as it's not letting Hao have his wish.
Yoh, who's spirit partner is the ghost samurai Amidamaru is joined by his allies, the ex-delinquent and fucking awesome guy, Bokuto No Ryu (Ryu Of The Wooden Sword) who is partnered with the spirit of the bandit Tokagero, Yoh's rival Tao Ren (the Vegeta of Shaman King), who at first hated humanity in the same way as Hao but then realised he was wrong (thanks to the power of FRIENDSHIP) who is partnered with the ghost of the ancient chinese warrior Bason, HoroHoro the snowboarding nature enthusiast and Faust XIII, a necromancer who has led himself to near-death with his obsession of reviving his wife.

Some anime fans complain how tired a trope the tournament thing is, since it's the cheapest way to get two characters, regardless of their relationship to get in a fight, but I actually really like this cliche, I think it works better than in like Bleach where they just go on a walk and get assulted by someone like in a JRPG.

The interesting thing about the fights is the Over Soul abilities, where they channel the spirit of their ghost partner in to a medium item to generate a spirit-powered weapon (a concept ripped off by Bleach but with cutting the ghost parner part out, altough I think the idea might have originated from YuYu Hakusho), and the Oversouls are inventive enough to seem original without seeming as absurd as some of the Devil Fruit abilities in One Piece.

Biggest flaw : There are no real flaws about it, but it's kind of like the Uncharted series as it brings nothing new to the table, instead just being well constructed. A personal complaint I have is the incredibly wrong way naked feet are drawn by the artist. Oh yeah and also the manga was canceled around 17 chapters before the story could come to it's natural conclusion, but the Kanzenban rerelease of the manga a few years later had the last 17 chapters in it.


Yeah I'd suppose this would be it for the first volume of reccomendations, since the shounen genre kind of is the same thing over and over, and I want to keep FMA, Eyeshield 21, Hokuto No Ken and others which I don't quite consider pure shounen in my hand for a bit longer.

happy holidays, niggili dillilies

Fortengard wisdom : theoretical alcohol brands and their commercials

Now I think I should provide some context about these before I write them. I have friends in Finland with who I play Super Street Fighter IV with on some weekends, and it involves booze. My buddy Ernest is better than me or Joni at video games, but he usualy drinks himself in to a coma and the next day he's got a terrible hangover, while Joni, who is fuled by alcohol takes the helm and plays against me through PSN, and we have a fierce, rivalry, altough it's mostly from Joni's side.
So I was reading Achewood because of reccomendation from Cathal, and I read one of the earlier strips where Mr.Bear catches Lyle doing caligraphy, and Mr.Bear commends Lyle for it, but Lyle just says ''I just sometimes imagine what it would be like if I had my own whiskey brand, you know?'' and the label says ''Liquid Banjo''.
This got me thinking, what if I had my own brand of booze? And what if I had a commercial for it? And what about my friends?

Then, I imagined this

There is a fog in a dark room, the only light comes from the window and the light of two monitors. The camera pans, revealing the contures of anime figures, DVD cases and stacks of video game magazines. There is a man sitting on a bed, his identity obscured by the lighting. There is the tapping of buttons coming from something he is holding with both hands. There is movement of obscured shapes on one of the monitors.
clickity clackity
clickity clackity
in the background, a clock can be heard, too
The clacking becomes more intense
The man is getting more worked up
by the other monitor, there is a bottle, it's label not seen
Suddenly, a sound!
''KO!!!!!!'' the announcer in the video game yells
The man throws down his controller against the bed
A clock is shown, it shows that it's now 2 AM
He reaches for the bottle
He drinks from it
''Fuck Joni, seriously''
He puts it down again, now the light reveals the label of the bottle
And then Nolan North narrates ''Pissing The Night Away, a new sensation by James Fortengard, for those friday nights''

But wait, there's also a sequel, with a new protagonist, brand and style.

Nighttime, in a room with decent, but nondynamic lighting.
A man with blonde hair is passed out on a bed.
In the background, music by Finnish superstar Matti Nykanen (just fucking listen to this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmMD6bLnvMI&feature=related )
You hear the clicking of buttons
A dog barks and walks by
A the back of a man who looks like a cross between Brad Shoemaker and the guy who portrayed the Glitch Gremlin in AVGN.
click click clack
''fakkin bullshit'' says the man
The camera now shows the man from the front, not showing the screen
He reaches for a bottle of cheap looking liqour
He plays the game with one hand
He drinks from the bottle, not breaking his gaze from the screen
As he starts to take another swig
''KO!!!!!!!'' shouts the game enhusiasticaly
He almost spills his drink and chokes
He coughs a bit and with a gasping voice he says
''Fakking bullshit'' in his unique accent
He puts the bottle down and goes to the PC to send taunts to the player who he just faced
The camera now shows the label of the cheap looking liqour
And Billy Herrington reads this
''Kuppenkorva, gives you the power of 10 drunks and will show syphilis who's the boss of this gym''
Endorsed by Darksydephil

And then there's a 3rd chapter in the saga.

The blonde man is in an alcohol-induced coma
A dog walks to him, whines and licks his hand
There is intense clicking of buttons heard in the background, the person clicking them not seen
this scene goes on for 10 seconds without change
the chirping of crickets
the sound of something falling down
''FAKKING SPAMMER'' yells the unseen man
The dog stares at the direction of the unseen man
the sleeping man makes a ''nnnggg'' sound, twitches slightly
The camera zooms out, a bottle is now in the foreground, and the camera focuses on it
The voice of Dante, Reuben Langdon, reads ''Ruined Tomorrow, you'll sleep like you a rock, but help you god when you wake up''

I'll probably come up with something more like this, and if you want me to make one about you, just ask. It also doesn't have to be booze.

what a terrible night to have a hangover

Anime DVD review : Gurren Lagann volume 2. The rise of mankind and the new threat

Gurren Lagann volume 2 contains episodes 10-18 and covers the rest of the Spiral King arc and the first episodes after the 7 year time skip.

synopsis (containing spoilers for both vol 1 and vol 2)

Simon is in a depression after the loss of Kamina. He also cannot control Lagann anymore due to his mental state, making him useless to the Dai Gurren Dan. Kittan has pretty much replaced Kamina as the leader of the group, altough it's a role he can't really fill. Nia, who didn't know what Kamina was like, still tries to get Simon to stop wallowing in despair.
After some diversions and a trap (not the gayboy kind), Gaume, another one of the 4 generals of the Spiral King has taken control of the Dai Gurren and is holding Nia hostage. Simon finally finds determenation to fight again and recues Nia. Then, as Lagann combines with Gurren, which is now being piloted by Rossiu, Simon delivers one of the most iconic monologues in the series, the ''Brother is dead, he's not here anymore, but he lives on in my heart...'' monologue, during which he finally accepts Kamina's death, gains new determenation to continue fighting and pretty much becomes the leader of the Dai Gurren Dan. He defeats but fails to kill Gaume, who retreats.
Slightly later on, Viral learns that Kamina, who he considered his rival, had died in the battle with Tylimph. Viral asks the Spiral King to make him stronger. The Spiral King accepts his request.
During the mandatory beach episode, Adine assults the Dai Gurren on sea, but is killed by Gurren Lagann.
Skipping ahead slightly, the Dai Gurren Dan assults Teppelin, the giant flying (?) fortress city of the Spiral King, also killing Cytomander, the 4th general of the Spiral King.
Gaume generates a force feild over the city, but Simon destroys him. All generals of the Spiral King are dead.
Then, as the force feild is destroyed, it is revealed that Teppelin is actually an impossibly huge Gunaman, and that the Spiral King and his throne room are at the very top.
To get Gurren Lagann, containing Simon, Rossiu and Nia to the throne room, the Dai Gurren is totally wrecked in it's mission, altough noone important dies in it, in what might be my favorite sequence in the entire series, which also uses the insert song ''Happily Ever After'', also by Shoko Nakagawa.
And then they arrive to Lord Genome, the Spiral King, who is revealed to be human. Simon quickly defeats Viral, who is utterly shocked when his powerup has changed nothing. The Spiral King says to Viral ''I didn't make you immortal so you could beat them, I made you immortal so you could tell this story until the end of time.''
He then engages Gurren Lagann in his personal Gunman, the Lazengann, which is very similar to Gurren Lagann, and has an awesome design.
Lord Genome beats down Simon with ease, but after a long, grueling battle, Lazengann, most of Gurren Lagann, and the throne room is destroyed. This isn't really a problem for Lord Genome, since he can punch so hard it can damage Lagann. But Simon stabs Lord Genome in the chest with his Core Drill, and blows a huge gole in Lord Genome. As Genome lives his final moments, he congratulates Simon on his victory, but says that he has pretty much started the end of the human race, something he was preventing all this time by keeping humans under ground. Before he falls off of Teppelin, presumably to his doom, he says ''When one million apes appear on the surface of the earth, the moon will destroy them all'' (kind of like in Majora's Mask).
Still, this is a massive triumph for humanity, and they believe that they are in for a future of prosperity.

And then there's a recap episode, recaping the entire Spiral King arc.
And then we get to the time skip.
It's been 7 years since the fall of Teppelin and now humanity is living in prosperity. Most of the important members of the Dai Gurren Dan are now high ranking officials of the world government, and Simon is the commander of the government. However, the one who actually controls the government is Rossiu. Humanity has reached a population of over one million.
Meanwhile, Yoko has become a teacher in a seaside city.
Simon proposes to Nia, who does not accept at first, but later agrees after she has marringe explained to her. Simon gives her a ring. As she puts it on, she becomes possesed by some sort of force.
Nia now refers to herself as the Messenger Of The Anti Spirals. She now talks in a cold, montone, stern fashion altough still retaining her formality. Nia, who no longer really is Nia, then reveals to Simon, and to the entire human population, that Lord Genome was truly protecting humanity by having it live underground, otherwise the moon would destroy the entire planet, since the moon is actually a death machine made by the Anti Spirals that is programmed to destroy the earth if the Spirals, life forms with Spiral energy in them reach a certain amount of population. The beastmen that Lord Genome created do not have this evolutionary energy in them and also cannot reproduce, which is why they did not trigger the mechanism. She also says that the fact that Nia is the daughter of Lord Genome, the previous leader of the Spirals has nothing to do with the fact that she became the messenger, instead it's the ring's fault. In a sense, it's all Simon's fault that humanity is now in peril of extinction, and if Simon and Kamina hadn't escaped from the underground, none of this would have happened.
She then warps away, as Kamina City is assulted by Anti Spiral drones. Simon somehow defeats them in Gurren Lagann, but imediately after it, Rossiu has the army arrest him due to the public outcry, since everyone now blames Simon for the crisis.

Volume 2 ends here

The finale of the Spiral King arc is one of the absolute highest points in the series, but the first time skip episodes at the end of this volume and the beginning of volume 3 are kind of shitty to be honest, but this volume is still worth it just for the ending of the Spiral King arc. Still, the early time skip episodes do a good job at setting up the next story arc, altough I do have one really big complaint about the setup I'm saving for later.

Also with the time skip, the opening is changed to the second verse of the same song (Sora Iro Days by Shoko Nakagawa), which I don't think is as good and the closing is changed from UNDERGROUND by HIGH VOLTAGE (all caps) to Minna No Peace (everyone's peace) by Afromania.
The characters are mostly the same both before and after the time skip and there are no voice actor changes ether.

There's really not that much I can talk about without spoiling, plus I would like to analyze only after I talk about volume 3.

CLEARLY! ZUN ZUN CHA ZUN ZUN CHA Donuts and America edition!

So taking a leaf from Markinator and Cathal's more relaxed and less focused writing style, I think I'll write some bullshit. See, while I do think the quality of my writing has improved, I think we need some more bullshit and swearing instead of sounding like a sentient anime encyclopedia.

Also here's a drinking game, take a shot every time I write the world ''clearly''.

Well there really isn't that much to talk about in some ways, but I think I'll probably try to find some sort of way to keep you interested (which is kind of like how picking up chicks works out for me)(nyeh).

Nyeah, so right now I returned from some German language competition and on my way home I bought some insanely delicious donuts. Like holy shit now I know why those fucking American cops are so fucking fat and lazy if this is their primary source of calories they need to beat me when I'm just holding a gun-shaped Transformer while my house is robbed by 12 year olds hopped up on PCP and industral-grade Cool Aid (the kind that will ether kill you from diabetus, or make you immune to it) and need to play Blops on a PS3 that happens to be mine since they need their fix like REALLY BAD, MAN. But atleast I don't get beaten TOO hard by the cops since they go in to cardiac arrest after the 3rd whack. But in the next morning it will be hard to exlain what these dead cops are doing in my front yard. But as soon as they go in to my house, the republicans will soon find their reason. Since I have a large collecton of video games and watch cartoons (''which are clearly meant for children!'')

''CLEARLY!''

They will say that I'm clearly a gay, liberal, terrorist hacker atheist with ties to Julian Assange, an alliance with the Chinese and possibly might be keeping Osama in my basement. (Osama is actually like, super good at CoD, I mean like holy shit, and the waffles he makes I mea.... I mean, which is CLEARLY NOT TRUE) and then I will have to ask Latvia for political asylum or something since I don't think I'll be able to fend off Fox News forever and my reputation amongst white people will be forever tarnished, but the muslims will all call me a brother, but I don't want to say no to pork! (my sweet, sweet pork).

Where was I?

Oh yeah, So maybe I should reconsider going to America next year. I don't know.

But anyway, as I endulge myself on these delicious, delicious donuts, which sadly, go straight to my sexy, sexy bum, which the ladies love (clearly!), I'm not sure what I should write.

I'm happy to see that my nig Mark has revived his blog, which is awesome, since while he might be a sage of stupid at times and is clearly wrong on several subjects, he is still a master wordsmith when it comes to nonsense.
Also my bro Cathal has a pretty cool idea about a rap-based RPG, which might sound corny but actually when you get deeper in to it (just like how I'm getting deeper in to this muffin, with my tounge (oooh you naughty boy)(that's what she said!)), it reveals a fantastic idea if it's conceptualized correctly.

So yeah, I also started watching Gainax's new animu. And I think it's awesome. Jesus fuck.

donuts suki suki donuts stocking donuts

Detroit Metal City - A story of a pussy of galactic proportions who is also the greatest death metal frontman ever

Detroit Metal City is a parody manga by Kiminori Wakasugi. It is a parody of the various music movements in Japan, but mostly focuses of the metal movement and also the popular, trendy hipster shit. It was adapted in to a live action movie and a 12 episode OVA with the average episode run time being 13 minutes. You could argue that Detroit Metal City is the Japanese equal to Metalocalypse, and you will be 140% right.

Soichiro Negishi is a country bumpking from Nagoya who moves to Tokyo to become a trendy hipster pop star, he adores swedish pop and the shibuya-kei movement (which is hip and trendy as fuck, and also gay). However, the rent doesn't pay itself, so his job is to be the frontman of the death metal band Detroit Metal City. As the frontman, he assumes the identity of Johannes Krauser III, who is the opposite of Negishi. Krauser is violent, rude and metal as fuck. The series focuses on the ways how Krauser, and the popularity of DMC interfieres with Negishi's normal life.
Negishi does get to live his dream in a way. He's in a popular band... as Krauser. He gets to be on TV... as Krauser. He has best selling albums... as Krauser and he gets to star in a movie with his favorite actors... As Krauser.

Negishi is a pussy on his own and I think he might be gay, but when shit gets tense he starts to channel Krauser. The dynamic between the two personalities is kind of like those of Akira Fudo and Devilman (Semi-obscure Go Nagai reference! GO!).

Krauser and the death metal scene in DMC is a kind of blunt and direct commentary on the metal crowd. DMC is kind of like Horsedick.mpeg since they sing about mostly the crudest and most direct things that are associated with death metal.
Their discography of songs includes songs with such classy titles as Satsugai (Murder, which is also the opening), Mesu Buta Kyokuyoku (Female Pig Symphony), Ano Ko Wo Rape (Rape that girl), Mao (Demon Lord/Satan) and Fuckingham Palace (which is actually a cover of another band's songs in the DMC universe). And these songs actually exist and they're on an album IRL. And they're actually not bad (if you're in to that sort of thing).
Krauser is rumored to be a sexual deviant who has raped hundreds of girls, and that as a teenager he had raped and killed his parents, and has demonic powers. And Krauser's fans take this very seriously and treat those things as cool facts, but not in a ''OHHHHH, THAT'S SO EDGY'' manner, but just a ''OH LOOK A BEER KEG, COOL!'' kind of way.
Krauser also appears with an middle-aged gimp named The Pig Of Capitalism that he beats up on stage.
DMC doesn't hate on these things at all, but it still does point out on how ridiculous and slightly retarded these things sound.

But also the shibuya-kei trendy hipster faggot movement is shown as a bunch of metrosexual wusses who like really sappy, sacherine songs that are not that good but they posture with them since they're indie in a way of sticking it up to the man.

Other music movements featured would be the punk scene, represented by the anti-sexism girlband known as the Kintama Girls (Kintama is slang for testicles) and their diss record ''DMC - Dumbass Motherfucking Cherry Boys''. But there's not that much actual commentary.

And then there's the rapper from ''New York'' known as Kiva, who was actually a classmate of Negishi from Nagoya. Kiva starts a beef with DMC and ends up losing horribly since his flows and rhymes are terrible and Krauser knew his secret past that he is not actually a gangsta from New York but the son of a fish shop owner fron Nagoya.

Then there's the final boss of the OVA, Jack il Dark, who is a parody of OG metalfags from the USA, Gene Simmons in particular. He's someone who really embraces being what Krauser is supposed to be but isn't really. Also he sounds like a middle aged white guy who is dubbed over with a menacing Japanese voice, but you can still hear the english, which is hilarious.

An amusing thing about DMC is the amount of times the words FUCK and RAPE are used, and they use the english words.

If you have 2 hours and 30 minutes to spare, marathon DMC, I think it's pretty hilarious and has some interesting commentary.