Alien Swarm is a free Source Engine adaptation of the original UT2K4 mod which was developed but the UT2K4 developers, Valve simply hired them and set them to work on this amazing sequel.

In a nutshell its a birds-eye-view strategic shooter set in a sci-fi world. Your goal in the first (and only officially released campaign) is to find a settlement and determine what happened to its residents, upon arrival you find it is overrun with hordes of Aliens and your job quickly turns from recon to search-and-rescue to obliterate.

In the game you have 4 classes with 2 playable characters from each class. The 4 classes are:

• The Officer: Buffs team, has awesome shotgun and millions of explosives.
• The Special Weapons Expert: Has heavy weapons like miniguns and the like.
• The Medic: Has access to a few pieces of medic equipment like the medic gun or medic pack.
• The Tech: A hacker designed to help progress the story in certain missions by doing some hacking mini games.

As I said each of the classes has two playable characters…typically one of the two will excel in their field while sacrificing certain other aspects while the other will be a more well rounded combatant.

This is what you are greeted with when you begin, a simple menu with 4 choices:

1. Your preferred character/class.
2. Your main weapon/class item.
3. Your secondary weapon/class item.
4. Your offhand item.

Pretty straight forward…typically you want to balance things out so you have one of each class…but in the later missions just dose up on fire power with 1 tech and maybe a medic if you’re feeling a bit noob.

You have access to over 40 different guns and items in the game and each is as good as the other in the right persons hands, however at this stage most people stick to the Tesla gun which hits and stuns multiple enemies at once. The flamer is the only gun other than the mining laser (a gun which is pick up only) which is required to complete certain missions and luckily someone thought things through with it. If you accidentally set your team mates on fire, your alt fire will spray a fire extinguishing spray which puts them out almost instantly…its a fantastic gun even if it is prone to killing team mates.

Combat can quickly get out of hand if you don’t think things through which is why the developers have given you access to turrets and Tesla coils to help slow the enemy hordes down. Eventually however your gear and skills will help you progress and you begin to create efficient tactics on the fly without too much thought.

The game also features a host of achievements that vary from speed-running maps to utilising weapons to their fullest potential, this of course pleases gamers as for some reason we no longer find interest in games without achievements…I blame the console players for this.

The only problem that I have found with the game to date is that Valve for some reason have left a huge array of console commands outside of the sv_cheats 1 parameter…which means you can effectively cheat without actually using the sv_cheats command. Because of this, you can gain a stupid amount of achievements and experience/ranks without actually trying which seems like a major flaw.

If you want to utilise this ‘cheating’ ability (I put in speech marks because technically it isn’t cheating as we aren’t doing anything other than using console commands) then save this file to: steam/steamapps/common/Alien Swarm/Swarm/cfg/ and once you are in game simply type “exec derp” into console. Be aware that this config will only work on a game that you are hosting and it will only last for one map, my recommendation is to run the config during the equipment loadout screen to save trouble in the midst of a game. Simply put, that config will make you super fast, super hard to kill and everything dies with one hit of any weapon

I won’t say much more about this game because you should already have it cause it is that awesome…if you don’t have it: HURRY UP AND GET THIS GAME!

I was to meet my brother Mega and mate Chro in Auckland and stay with them and finally return back with them instead of staying with the Xeta guys…here is the jist of what happened.

We arrive and unpack our hordes of shit into the motel…Chro brought 2 mountain bikes along and left with 3…lol. We used the same motel as last year – The Rayland:

And fuck yea its awesome! 5 minutes walk to xLan, next to Rainbows End, has a Gengy’s (which almost killed me) and an arcade in the carpark!

Fuck yea! We arrived at xLan and we got to bypass the registration as we came in on Thursday night to do it. Mega stuffed up and lost his pass and had to line up with all the other plebs while we strolled right in

Lol…look at that guys “Haters gonna hate” walk right in the middle there.

I love seeing a lan hall go from empty to full in under a few hours…just looks awesome. In our case, our setup was a nightmare because the xLan guys reseated us 3 times cause they are stupid.

Chro’s rig is set and rearing to go alongside mine on the left and Mega’s on the right.

An awesome picture of xeta|Xeno’s back…Also worth noting that xeta are now Nightshift due to clan rage

Oooo yea its filling up now baby! You can almost make out my screen on the bottom left there glowing blue with Nana-tan on it

650 players, all in one room ready to game!

The console guys got excluded to their own table at the back of the room…one guy brought a tiiiiiiiny little screen to play on…shit it was lulz

Another picture of the hall:

The xLan mainstage looked cool but the shoutcasters sucked, the crowd sucked and either the servers kept dropping people or the PC’s would crash:

This Playtech shop got some wicked business over the weekend and just kept randomly stocking their shelves with shit and sold pretty much everything off at a huge price drop from RRP. Was awesome, not sure why the booth babes were there though…most xLanners didn’t like them cause they were plastered in make up and looked hideously skanky:

I dont know who this is…but they got a photo with booth babes…who had no booth to stand at:

Fuck this, day one over…nothing happened…Me and Mega head home…holy crap it looks like I have a bald patch at the back of my head!

While we are leaving, Insom and Azure from xeta are heading back in, the entrance looks pretty sweet at night:

Even from way out in the carpark:

Day 2 ticks over after a horrible sleep due to someone outside being noisy all night long. Chro and I are heading into Auckland today to visit a manga cafe and an arcade or two.

We awake and come in to find the projector dead:

And a FUCKING REDBULL TRUCK. This cocksucker played loud music both inside the hall and outside the main entrance and ALL of it was hiphop rubbish, they managed to piss off almost everyone in xLan:

Found some awesome sleeping arrangements around the place, like this one right outside the main stage:

Chro caught up on anime over the weekend including finishing Angel Beats, a show I should really blog about:

Anyway, so we make it to Auckland – a place full of fucktards, horrible traffic, stupid billboards and parking prices that will bankrupt the world:

OMG WE FOUND NARUTARDS!!!!

NARUTARDS!!! BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Chro’s elite stalking skills meant we got them on camera without them noticing.

Then we saw the best drag race in the world, this noisy ass modified VW van versus a GT3RS…The GT3RS won of course but it was funny to watch these two idiots:

Anyway, we went back to the Lan after going through a bunch of shops and getting some B grade sushi…the Lan sucked…so we left again to get some god awful curry that made me feel sick.

And then we went to play golf!

Went back to xLan again to play some more games and we found the laser tag they had set up outside for free!

Here is a picture of Torchedhead and Gamgee gearing up

And a crowd shot of all of us that played:

So at this stage we went back to sleep and I came back on the last day to race trackmania only to find that Yam (an awesome TMNF racer) had left due to the lan sucking and I found out that half the times we raced weren’t properly recorded…we also found that our awesome scores in the gaming marathon that Chro, Mega and I clocked up weren’t recorded either! So we made the decision to ditch xLan and head home while raging.

Since we’ve been back, I have had multiple requests to crew next year – something I didn’t particularly want to do considering the amount of cash I sunk into this trip for a Lan that was pretty horrible. However I am now seriously considering it as the TMNF tournament could benefit from my knowledge (even if TM2 is out) and the Marathon games need fixing bad…something I would like to control.

So yea…great trip, terrible Lan. I honestly cant recommend it due to how badly it failed…but the socialising was awesome.

Last year Fireryda did a blog post here about his top 5 female anime characters with Kino from Kino no Tabi heading the list which stunned me at the time because I had never heard of her and could not imagine Fireryda rating someone so boring looking over the other 4.

However…it wasn’t until I started watching it that I realised that Kino is by far one of the most interesting anime characters I have ever seen. Also, there are spoilers within.

As far as the story goes Kino no Tabi follows the journey of Kino, a traveller who moves between countries and stays no longer than 3 days at any given place. The world Kino lives in is a strange parallel world to our own that wavers between futuristic sci-fi and medieval life and includes all sorts of weird things like Kino’s companion Hermes – The talking British Motorcyle. The story itself is so incredibly profound and beautiful even though it can be horribly morbid at times and coming from watching Zero no Tsukaima (something I wont bother blogging about at all) the story was fantastically written.

It seems throughout the journey Kino finds places that have issues mimicking our own here on Earth like religious wars, countries promoting slaughter of others to save being slaughtered themselves etc. Kino herself, as Fireryda put it, is able to completely disconnect herself morally from the places she visits and observes almost apathetically how they act. She remains on the road to experience places and learn about people and cultures but she never stays long enough to settle down.

One of the best things about the series was the final episode which featured the only episode where you see emotion registered on Kino’s face:

What made this particular episode so powerful is that every single episode before it took place after the events in the finale! This emotional episode served to show the hardships Kino faced throughout her travels and how they came to affect her and it was brilliant.

Other than that, the other episode that was great for me was the android one…where Kino stumbles upon a group of people alone in a forest where an entire country should be and she soon discovers that everything is not as it seems. The whole episode was horribly morbid but it was amazing because of it and because of Kino’s apathy to the whole story that unfolds.

I’ll talk about the art and music in a minute but let me quickly talk about Kino.

The entire story revolves around Kino and special emphasis on how she reacts to certain situations and how her past experiences influence her actions. Throughout her Journeys, Kino is faced with dangerous and life threatening situations but no matter what she never panics…she simply assesses the situation and acts accordingly meaning even when she doesn’t have her trademark guns she can still fight back using her wits. In more than one case she is able to overcome enemies vastly outnumbering her with a single shot.

She likes meeting new people but at the same time dislikes it because she fears becoming attached to people and places which is also why she never stays more than 3 days at any given place as she doesn’t want to settle down. She also got her passion for travelling as well as her name (her real name is never given but we can guess it to be “Sakura” based on 2 episodes that reference each other) from a traveller who met her in her home town which was a morbid place that believes after the age of 12 you must have your brain modified to remove many emotions so you can become more of an “adult”. The traveller (the original Kino) rebuilds Hermes and prepares to leave the town where upon he throws his own life away to save the young girl Kino…she jumps on Hermes and escapes into the open where she meets an old lady called “Master” who trains her in shooting and grants her “Cannon”, the first of two guns.

The art in this anime is brilliant in its simplicity, the designers found a style and stuck to it. The style echoes throughout the entire series without changing and is a predominant feature throughout. The animation is simple and there are many long scenes that simply don’t have any words so that you can stop and get a feel of the world Kino is in. The character design can be a little bit sloppy sometimes in that many people end up looking the same as well as sounding the same.

Kino herself is wonderfully cast as she always seems to have an air of melancholy about her as she speaks. Hermes is great as well in that he never changes.

I don’t know how much more I can talk about Kino no Tabi so I think I’ll just cut it short here. Basically its an amazingly powerful anime that is well written and planned out. Easily a 10/10 from me and a must see if you want to watch something well written for a change.

Next up is Eden of the East once I finish catching up on the other series I have.

After having a fit of errors loading for the first time that required me to dick around with display settings and update various DirectX things I managed to get into the game without it loading as a plain black screen.

To start I have to quote Affian…this game is essentially Half-life 2 + F.E.A.R. + Fallout 3.

It is like Half-Life 2 in that it has various puzzle elements which aren’t necessary but can prove useful like finding all the lighting systems in a tunnel and powering them all down to force the enemy to come closer to you than they usually would. Also like Half-Life you can choose whether or not you want to strategically take down enemies by blasting barrels/pushing them off platforms or just throwing more bullets at them…typically the latter option appeals to me more.

It is like F.E.A.R. in that there are various psychic creatures that try to stuff with your head…most humans go insane at their psychic touch but you (playing as Artyom) are somewhat immune and thus you are sought after to help people out. Occasionally you are assaulted with a bright white screen which seemingly blasts you into an alternate reality that the enemy controls…in much the same way F.E.A.R. does.

It is like Fallout 3 in that everything is shit coloured and apocalyptic. There are mutant beasts roaming the tunnels and the surface and you will have many skirmishes with them which drives you mental as they come in large packs and you will use all your ammo on all your guns trying to stop them…leaving you no bullets and no time to reload and thus you end up slashing like a madman with a knife. You also have various bits of equipment like Fallout 3 that helps you to survive the deadly forces against you. One of the more fun ones is the gas mask…you have filters on your mask that constantly need replacing else toxic fumes start getting you. Not only that, it can be broken and cracked in combat so you have to be very careful when and where you choose to use it.

As far as the story goes its a strange blend of sci-fi and post-apocalyptic action, you live in Moscow Russia after the world has been devastated by nuclear war and humanity has only been able to survive there due to the metro tunnel systems underground. Much of humanity has been simply obliterated or mutated, in the cases I have seen so far we have giant clawed hunchbacked zombie things, the same thing again but with wings and some long limbed super psychic creatures designed to play with your mind.

You play as Artyom who is also the narrator and you are tasked (well initially at least) to get to Polis station to seek help from the Rangers who are elite guards of the tunnels. Along the way you will fight the creatures of the surface and tunnels, Nazi loyalists, Russian Communists and various forms of bandits. On top of that, when you least expect it you can be hit from psychic attacks which make your life difficult and throughout the game you are forced to constantly stop and assess your current situation. Should you choose not to check your approaches and your rear occasionally, you will end up making a move that will kill you or you will be flanked and eaten/shot.

Much of the metro system is dominated by old technology and various pieces of human ingenuity as the war devastated all manner of useful objects. You are forced to move around using trams powered by hand and you will have to navigate through ramshackle towns using only a compass and without a world map.

Most of the guns I have used for combat so far look pretty worn down but operational…you cant expect to find a pretty new M4A1 lying about and thus you are forced to use various inaccurate assault rifles and strange weapons like a BB rifle that is powered with a hand pump…fail to pump at the right times and you’ll be firing weak bullets.

The visuals of the game are rather stunning and impressive. When I managed to surface walk for the first time I found myself looking around in circles at all the destroyed scenery and the ruins of Moscow and the tunnels hold their own in their gritty reality. I only had one qualm with the graphics and that is there is only a possible 3 colours in the game: Bright green (signifying nuclear radiation), Light blue (signifying psychic/strange presence) and Brown (signifying EVERYTHING else). While Affian was not terribly pleased with my take on the graphics, you only have to look at the above two screenshots to see that clothes, walls, creatures, vehicles, guns and ground is all painted a horrible brown colour.

Sure it could be worse and its only a small issue but it just annoys me when all you see is one colour walking about in what could be some truly amazing scenery.

Also I need to make a note on the Physics and Gameplay aspects:

The physics: Usually they perform admirably but there are a few annoying issues. Any wall that is not dead flat can be strafed straight up giving you a massive field of view of the area in front of you as well as allowing you to dodge any passing objects. Explosives have an amazing ability to damage you through walls and sandbags…I threw a grenade over a low sandbag wall and dodged behind a concrete wall and the resulting explosion killed me even though the wall and sandbags were completely intact. There is also the occasional clipping on an object and getting stuck for a few seconds but its rare so isn’t really worth worrying about.

The gameplay: A few things that will frustrate the living shit out of you are that bullets are money in this world. If you have military grade ammo (big shiny powerful rounds) then you can trade them in for various goods as a form of currency. However you can also set your gun to fire these rounds which is costly but they are more powerful than standard ammo. What is REALLY annoying is when you don’t realise you have switched ammo and you start firing your money away into some weak enemies skulls only to have a cry later. Another thing that annoys me is that there is 4 slots for weapons: 1 for melee, 1 for pistol/sidearm, 1 for automatic weapon, 1 for pneumatic weapon. What would be nice is if there were simply 1 for melee and 3 for everything else. When you find an AK47 you are forced to either ditch your wonderful silenced “bastard” gun for it while you hold on to your pathetic pistol and shotgun. Then you get an awesome automatic shotgun with a bayonet attached but you have to ditch it should you want a sniper or specialist pump action gun like the BB gun…its just plain annoying…its like the game is forcing you to get good at all areas of combat which prevents you from specialising in any one.

Anyway so far I am liking the game even if it is prone to crashing randomly when I kill an enemy or am killed myself…I would honestly love this game a lot more if they had a quick save function (or even a save function at all) because more often than not you are forced to travel and fight for 10 minutes only to die and restart it…annoying as hell. I’ll likely be playing this game slowly as I really should be doing more tech work than gaming but I will give a full review of the game should I actually complete it.

Also as for Just Cause 2, I really cant be arsed playing it…it seemed like a good game but its too much of a straight buggy console port for me to care. Metro 2033 is almost a console port in that I have to play with all the mouse sensitivity settings in game set to 0 for me to be able to turn without doing full circles.

Also I apologise for the screenshots I will post below, I only had a low quality 4:3 sub seeing as its a few years old now.

The first thing that struck me about DearS was how similar it was to Chobits…some might disagree there but the first episode just screamed it. So I was rather surprised to find out that DearS actually came out first…but only by a month. Which means two separate anime with similar(ish) stories were in production at the same time….awesome.

DearS is an anime about an alien slave race known as … DearS. Pronounced how you would say: “Dears”. These aliens are given to other people to form a master-slave bond with them which manages to make use of the word “goshujinsama” which makes every single Anime nerd word wide get a woody. A small contingent of these DearS have crash landed in Japan and are now stuck on Earth as they try and pretend they are not a slave race as to not come across as completely useless aliens.

The DearS have an innate ability to understand languages and can learn them in a single day to perfection…however that level of skill doesn’t continue through other academic subjects…but who cares, they can fly and have magic powers and stuff.

We follow the life of Ikuhara Takeya as he comes to grips with living with a DearS which proves to be a great source of entertainment. Ren (Takeya’s DearS) is a defective DearS in that most DearS are assigned masters where she simply chooses one, this of course fulfils some weird prophecy about being the “Gift” or something.

Takeya is chosen by Ren against his will and he struggles to come to terms with the fact right up until the last episode. Along the way he is befriended by another two DearS which causes huge upset among the community and among his friends, eventually he is pitted against the DearS community who are after Ren…all in all its a pretty cliche story but the emphasis is all on the characters. So lets talk about them.

Takeya himself (pictured in the above two screenshots) is a high school student who comes from a torn family and has decided to leave them behind and go study alone. Takeya has a hatred of aliens and constantly thinks they are conspiring against him and thus he struggles to form a bond with Ren.

He also has a loli imouto who made me rage every second she was on the screen…she isn’t related to him by blood but the two have a relationship stronger than most siblings:

All she does is complain and moan about how Takeya isn’t giving her enough time and that Ren should move out away from Takeya…ANNOYING!

Ren herself is an odd sort as you would expect from a defective alien slave. All she wants to do is please Takeya in any way she can, however she does not understand humans correctly and constantly makes elementary oversights while in public which drives Takeya mad. She will often point out things like his porn collection to his friends thinking that it is a perfectly natural thing to talk about…hilarity ensues.

Just to add to Takeya’s mounting frustration surrounding the DearS, Miu comes along. Miu is an educated DearS who is attempting to learn about humanity by enacting a home-stay with a Japanese family while she studies in school. Miu eventually befriends Ren and Takeya and struggles to come to terms with her responsiblities as a DearS versus her love for her new friends and family. She also has ridiculously long pink hair.

The school teacher is worth noting as well…pretty much every time you see her, she is half naked talking about sex, even in the classroom. Although all she does is advance plots and provide comic relief:

The last person I’ll make note of is Neneko who is a childhood friend of Takeya and is madly in love with him but she simply cant admit it to either herself or others. She goes out of her way to help Takeya no matter what but her struggle is with Ren being so close to Takeya…while she dreams of bathing with Takeya, Ren simply hops in the bath with him.

There is little in the way of actual story apart from it being Takeya’s daily life with his friends but there is also the conflict among the DearS community which rears its ugly face towards the end of the series. But of course it isn’t expected to be a highly in depth story as its a light anime which is fun to watch casually and will make you laugh no matter what. Aside from that, it has an awesome ED:

The art isn’t fantastic either seeing as time is against it however the style is awesome with lots of emphasis on stupid looking faces. The animation is smooth enough even if the backgrounds are rather dull and lifeless in just about every scene…but again, we’re watching this for the characters…so balls to the art.

I gotta admit I kinda liked this anime…I didn’t expect too. It seemed too simple and didn’t have the level of comedy that the series I am currently watching but I liked the characters a lot and they all seemed to compliment each other. I especially liked how the characters base personality didn’t change at all through the series, that is to say Takeya stays defiant of the DearS and chooses not to be Ren’s master no matter what happens…this of course drives all the women around him barking mad and confuses the shit out of Ren. But yea…the characters were well casted and likeable (save for Takeya’s little sister).

I know there is a hell of a lot more to say about this anime but I simply can’t be assed…I give it an 7.5/10 because I’m not sure if I simply liked it or really liked it…I’ll figure it out later.

Now I’m off to watch Zero no Tsukaima and think about whether I should bore you lot with an impressions blog of Working!! (which is definitely worth watching btw).

Ciao!

This is where I usually sum up my overall thoughts on the anime I have watched…but I struggle to think just what I could write about Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. To me it hit all the right notes but didn’t go out of its way to be something truly amazing, it just sorta got half way and said: “Bullocks to everything, this is pretty good, lets go home and have a beer”.

It had a deep enough story planted through it but a lot of the time it skimmed over the plot purposely to keep you guessing as to exactly what relates to what, unfortunately it came across as thin, instead of being full of suspense. Of course this didn’t apply to the entire anime, simply certain parts however it was still there enough to get me more than a little annoyed.

Also I have to say one thing cool…what I usually do with these reviews is go back to the first episode and skim through each and every episode to not only get the baseline of what happened but also various screenshots to throw into these blog posts. What I accidentally found though was brilliant: In the first episode, the Major calls out to Batou and he flies up on a chopper hanging off the side. I didn’t pay a lot of attention too it, however in the final episode the exact same thing happens but with a lot more meaning so you remember it. It just made me flashback and was just plain awesome to do…someone clearly thought something through there to please returning viewers.

I shall now continue with my now familiar type of blog writing by talking about: The story, the characters, the art, the voice acting and the over all attraction.

Without further adieu:

The Story:

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is a sci-fi, cyberpunk anime set 20 years in the future in 2030 and follows a special police force known as Public Security Section 9. They specialise in dealing with cyber-terrorism as well as those that employ androids and cyborgs to fight for them however the underlying story follows the life of these people as they attempt to uncover the “Laughing Man”. The Laughing Man is a supreme hacker who has intercepted details about a medical scandal and is desperately trying to show the public the truth of the matter however in doing so, he becomes a cyber-terrorist and attracts the attention of Section 9.

Of course in any anime there will be filler episodes that have no relevance to the underlying story…but in this anime those episodes aren’t just plain annoying like many others. You even come to enjoy them especially if two or three of them relate to each other in some way.

The story almost comes across as a thriller as you constantly try to place what is going to happen next and more often than not you simply can’t hit the nail on the head due to (as I said earlier) the fact that it can be a little thin. I’m going to quote my mate ChatterboxZombie again as I did in my B Gata H Kei Impressions post: “Those who pay attention will be rewarded with an intelligent and engaging scifi experience, but for many its just too much”…while I can’t fully agree with his words for reasons I just explained, they’re close enough.

The Characters:

Usually, as no doubt I have explained before, I get attached to certain characters in an anime. Once the attachment forms strongly I will usually come to love the anime but it was such a struggle with this anime, hence I’m so lost as to think what was good/bad about it.

The main characters of Section 9: The Chief, the Major, Batou, Togusa, Ichikawa, Boma, Pazu and Saitou are all…really…really…boring.

Sure the Major is about as bad-ass as you will find in any anime but she lacks so much personality and it isn’t until the last 2 episodes that you can start to understand her feelings in any way.

Sure Batou is a huge angry cyborg and has a morbidly chipper attitude, but apart from having a crush on the major and having a military past…we really know nothing about him.

Sure the Chief is a tactical genius but you really learn nothing about him and barely get told about his past and family.

The rest aren’t even worth mentioning…save for Togusa. Togusa is the family-man of the lot and is also the least cybernetically modified yet spends most of his screen time in fire fights and espionage.

But…oddly enough I didn’t become attached to these characters at all. I came to love the Tachikoma robots…sure its pathetic but their hilarious antics just appealed to my crap sense of humour…they are just awesome:

The Art:

Unfortunately since I have only recently been watching new anime released within the last few years I have become somewhat of a quality whore. If the anime isn’t in 720p or in widescreen I struggle to adjust and come to terms with the low quality picture…but I have to say that I wasn’t at all bothered with Stand Alone Complex. Considering it was made in 2002 it has an amazing style to it, it doesn’t even try to do the pathetically futuristic flying car crap…it just sticks to future robotics and cybernetic implants.

The drawing style was smooth and simple, no over the top outfits or vehicles or anything and it was punctuated well by smooth animation although I can’t say I was a fan of the 3D scenes with cars and whatnot.

Speaking of cars…why is it that whenever someone wants to go anywhere in this anime they take off with wheel spins and smoke…that’s just unnecessary.

The Voice Acting:

There wasn’t anything overly special about the voice acting but it fit very well to all the characters but again, every single one of them lacked emotion. Perhaps that was the point? I’m not really sure.

Where I initially came to love the Tachikoma’s was over their hilarious voice…here is a little scene:

Also as far as I understand it, the English voice actors portray their characters very similar to the Japanese but as usual I prefer to watch Subs over Dubs so I cant comment on the English version.

I guess there isn’t a hell of a lot more to say about voices so lets talk about…

The Attraction:

What makes me want to go back to this anime? Well simply put it is as I said earlier: Each episode is great, even the fillers and you can appreciate even the plots that don’t have relevance to the main story as they expand on the characters.

The cyberpunk sci-fi style comes across wonderfully and I love that they didn’t go over the top with futurism as many anime/movies/games seem to do. It stuck to a core story around the integration of humans and machines and everything revolved around it instead of simply incorporating it into the story.

The story itself can seem light at times but has very heavy undertones if you listen closely and that, if you don’t watch anime to have pretty pictures on your screen, makes for a fine watch.

Batou and the Major are worth watching it for too, they might seem a little bland but they kick ass like no other.

In the end then I have to give this an 8/10. It could be better but I’m sure that it would simply lose what it has if it tried so it is content and so am I.

No doubt you will have already looked at the images below and discovered what B Gata H Kei is all about, but I shall warn you that this post isn’t really SFW. I’m sure your boss doesn’t want you to see ecchi whilst being paid.

The Story:

The anime itself is set around a 15 year old girl Yamada who is a virgin but is kinky as hell. Her goal is to reach 100 casual sex partners but alas that would turn this anime straight into a full on hentai anime, instead she gets caught up on some unremarkable boy named Kosuda. Kosuda is a soft spoken virgin (well…we don’t actually know…but we can assume) who is extremely nice but at the same time awkward as hell. So the story continues with a girl that is super model material against a guy who is too awkward to get any where with her – You can kinda guess the plot from there.

While talking to a friend ChatterboxZombie about the anime, we discussed whether or not it is as we expected. I honestly didn’t think I’d like this anime as it guarantees to leave a lot to be desired but was I increasingly surprised as the first episode played along, Chatter exclaimed: “i knew i would [like B Gata], even though its generic and paper-thin its fun and light” and that sentence right there almost sums up the anime completely. You know it isn’t there to be in depth so you expect the story to be pathetic else the overly cliche characters (explained next) simply would not fit into the series well.

15 year old 43 kg girl with that sorta cleavage?…lol.

The Characters:

Our protagonist Yamada is highly outspoken yet horribly confused about how to get men. She really wants to have sex but she only views the end goal instead of the path to get there which leaves her in some seriously awkward situations. She is voiced by Yukari Tamura who I only really know well from Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha (as Nanoha herself) and again to quote Chatter: “The voice for Yamada was for me rather unexpectedly high…kinda annoying at first but I got used to it”. Within the first 5 minutes this same thought hit me, initially it was just annoying to listen to but as time went along it became more natural, unfortunately however she does the singing for the OP and ED, neither of which I like:

Kosuda is how you would expect the typical mid-pubescent teenager to be around Yamada, highly awkward. Yamada is hopelessly inept at conveying the correct meaning in her thoughts and Yamada always misunderstands her meaning so is not sure if she is coming on to him or just being bi-polar. When he thinks there’s a chance to get closer he makes a move but each time is thwarted by Yamada as she realises how weird she is being…so he’s stuck in a rut and its funny.

Yamada has a few friends that are introduced in the first ep, notably her big breasted F-cup friend who is the typical sidekick to the struggling main character. There is also a few other girls (and guys for that matter)  that idolise Yamada but they aren’t worth mentioning.

Both Kosuda and Yamada have sisters, Kosuda’s is older than he and is protective of her spineless brother while Yamada has the moebomb loli imouto who, at one point, is reading her hentai magazines…

The Art:

Its awesome…as I have sadly come to expect these days which makes it infinitely harder to move back to older series. The style is well thought out and looks simple yet elegant, the characters themselves aren’t particularly amazing facially but their uniforms/bags/other shit (pantsu) is drawn well and it works. So nuff said there.

The Attraction:

Essentially the reason I look forward to this anime is its comedy, honestly its so cheesy its funny. Again, its light hearted and blunt and you can’t really predict anything because Yamada is a fucktard so it keeps the comedy flowing rather well.

So far I think I will watch this anime for the rest of the season, if it keeps up with its great style and comedy I could easily see this being a potential favourite comedy anime…but we shall see.

The other reason to watch it of course is the ecchi…which is always followed by comical moments.

OH GNOES! FORGOT THE CONDOMS!

I was advised to get Mount and Blade by Budda simply cause “It is awesome”…so I got it.

I don’t know why I’m giving this review though seeing as my brother Mega plays it far more than I…but whatever here goes nothing.

I went into this game expecting nothing, I had never heard of this game nor seen screenshots or gameplay videos…so when I got in there I was in for a surprise.

The game itself is based in a fictional world where you travel around on horseback recruiting warriors into your army…the problem is, travelling is tedious and boring as hell. You spend half your life running round the map like a douche and towards the end, the game is almost completely unplayable without cheats.

The controls to operate the world map are stupid…you know when people like to try be different with their software rather than just stick to tried and true efforts? Yea that’s pretty much it…Whenever you click on a location on the map the camera pans to it and wobbles around a bit making it difficult to keep fast paced gaming going. You have to move around with the keyboard instead of the mouse (like what?) which isn’t so much of an issue but it just becomes frustrating after a time seeing as you have far more control with a mouse.

Clicking on locations is nigh impossible if there is cramped up enemies…for example, if you are camping outside a castle and you have a team mate besieging the castle, you will have 3 clickable objects right next to each other…and god forbid you want to hit the right one.

So yea, don’t go into this game expecting well thought out control systems.

Don’t go in expecting good graphics either, even the newer version Warband lacks good graphics, everything is pretty much bland.

See what I mean?

Don’t go into this game expecting good AI, you wont find any there either. I sat and watched 20 horsemen chase down one enemy horseman for about 5 straight minutes till my foot soldier crossbowman sniped him out of his saddle, I thought about joining in but I wanted to see exactly how the AI would react to the fast guy outmanoeuvring them…apparently they don’t react at all.

This is a good idea, make all of your heroes (non-common fighters) wear the same armour and helmets so you can easily distinguish where they are. It helped me immensely.

So then: The graphics aren’t good, the world map and its controls leaves a lot to be desired, the AI is terrible and to top it off you have no gameplay tutorials…you just have to figure shit out as you go along or leave the game to do the tutorials…both of which suck.

So what do you play it for then?

Well…the answer is simple. The battles.

When you are being assaulted by a force thrice your numbers and you manage to hold them off with your superior army which you trained to top level you feel a sense of excitement. You can assault a village solo and slaughter hundreds of innocent villagers and then plunder and burn their precious little town afterwards or you could smash through hordes of bandits making life unbearable for the villagers.

You can assault a King and his warband and take the bastards prisoner or you could valiantly defend your own Kings castle to your last breath.

You’d think the gameplay would become horribly repetitive after a while (which it does) but it never loses its fun factor. Charging head first into an enemy Lord with a couched Pike and taking him clean off his horse and knocking him out cold in one hit is truly exhilarating. Hacking through mercenary bands recruited to your enemies forces just to free some prisoners that could be useful to you is hilarious.

Honestly I can’t stress how ridiculously fun this game is even for all its flaws. I can’t recommend it when comparing it to other current gen games built by large companies…but I can compare it to games of old that prove fun no matter how many times you play them: RA2, Diablo 2, GTA 2 etc.

Anyway there is a lot to say about how this game is played with ranks, heroes, upgrades, supplies and levels of warriors but I simply can’t be bothered writing it all because its all boring crap.

Game gets a 7/10, Fun as hell but needs some elbow grease.

A tip though: Attack raiders that have “Peasant Woman” prisoner, level them up to Sword Sisters…those bitches just don’t die, regardless of how much abuse you throw at them. Also once you have cash handy, get lots of Hired Blades, they take a lot of punishment while dealing just as much both on foot and on a mount.

Some time ago I wrote my impressions about Sora no Woto based on the first episode and as of last night I have finished the series…below is a somewhat spoileriffic review because chances are that if you’re reading this, you’ve either watched it or wont watch it at all. Also…I shall tell you the entire story using only screenshots.

Starting after episode 1, our heroes find an owl...The owl is also the symbol of the Platoon they are in...so they keep it.

The team is trying to repair an ancient tank using the amazing technical skills of Kannagi Noel who is a genius scientist.

Grievous injuries occur.

Felicia talks to some dead bloke.

Further injuries occur...this time far more serious...

Kanata wears some stupid fucking outfit.

Theres ALWAYS a bathing scene.

Klaus gets raped by a loli.

Some senile old bitch appears and is killed off in the same episode and Rio is all like: "Shit woman, you're like my mum!"

Rio has a brain...and buggers off leaving only a trumpet behind.

They find a Roman scout...who speaks German...

Some insane prick appears and tries to trigger a war because he wants the economy to flow...

Yui-Ahh...I mean Kanata stops a war by playing Amazing Grace on Rio's trumpet.

Rio turns up all regal and shit and is like: "Cut this shit out!" and the war ends...yea...so to end wars you need to play a trumpet and wear a dress.

Anyway that was the premise…as far as the anime goes here is a quick list of things:

• Style:

Basically it follows the same art style as K-ON for most purposes. The art itself is very focused on clean character faces with detailed backgrounds and by all means it looks wonderful and I can’t really fault it there.

• Plot/Story:

This is where things go awry…the story is about a girl who signs up to the military because she wants to learn music. She is taught the bugle and it is used for signalling…oddly enough even the most advanced spider-like war tanks simply don’t have a comms system. Anyway her squad is completely female who sport a variety of skills and attitudes, the weirdest being Felicia…the captain. She just is too nice to be a captain…then again Rio takes role of the hardcore lieutenant but I don’t think that counts for much. Pretty much the entire series is a filler…the last 3 episodes are war related and its all over too suddenly, which is annoying.

• Voice Acting:

You know what, I cant fault the voice acting either. Each characters voice portrayed their specific character perfectly even if I didn’t like those characters.

• Theme:

What I got from this anime is that it was trying to say (quite blatantly) that all humans are the same and that war is totally unnecessary. The theme was upheld throughout the anime using the song Amazing Grace as both armies knew the song regardless of culture and background.

• Final Rating: 6/10. Great VA and Art work but the story leaves far too much to be desired and the themes were portrayed weakly.

It all started with Breakout in 1976 created by Atari and was followed by the cult hit Arkanoid by Taito in 1976. I all the time since then so many clones have been made that it’s just unbelievable, such a simple concept of a game derived from Pong.

Now we have Shatter by Sidhe a Wellington game developer that has gained international renown for a game that in the beginning was based on Pong. Shatter is much more than just another Arkanoid clone though it’s taken the idea and added some 2009 polish and innovation.

What features makes Shatter standout among all the clones? First up I have never seen a game with so much polish, and by that I mean all the graphics, sounds, physics and game-play have been worked into perfection. All the graphics are 3D even though the game is 2D by nature, this is a game worth drooling over, and the graphics make it such a pleasure to watch.

In the middle of play you can shoot out as many balls into play as you want, keeping in mind that each one is a life. So if you have 3 lives, you can shoot out 3 balls making for bigger combos and a higher score, but be careful each of those balls is a life so if you lose even one you are still losing a life. You have two ways of affecting the physics in play, Blow and Suck: Blow pushes Blocks, Shards and the Ball away from you while suck does the reverse. Sucking in all the Shards boosts your power meter which powers your shields and when full lets you unleash a shardstorm destroying or damaging all the bricks it hits.

Game Modes

Story Mode

Story Mode takes you through various worlds with each one containing different styles of levels and its own music. At the end of each world there is a Boss that you must destroy before you can continue. The bosses range from nice an easy to controller throwing, keyboard smashing frustrating.

High scores are listed both for each world and for story mode as a whole, but remember, if you run out of lives you can use a continue… setting your score back to 0.

Endless

Endless mode is exactly that, endless. Waves of blocks keep spawning at the far end of the play field and slowly move towards you and it’s up to you to survive this onslaught.

Endless also sports a Co-Op version where 2 players on the same computer team up to take on the endless block hordes.

Time Attack

In Time attack you face the same challenge as Endless except with a 5 minute time limit. Same deal with Time Attack Co-Op.

Bonus Mode

Bonus Mode pits you against 3 balls in play that move faster each time they hit your Bat and it’s up to you to keep all three in play for as long as possible. There are 3 levels where each one is a different shape and all have 3 balls in them and your score gets totalled up after all three levels.

Boss Mode

Boss Mode pits you against Boss after Boss until you’ve gone through every boss in story mode the challenge here is not only to survive but to kill all the bosses in the shortest time possible.

Soundtrack

This game has one of the best soundtracks for a game to come out in a long time; it both sets the feel of the game and is enjoyable to listen to.

And now I leave you with this awesome peice of entertainment to feast your eyes and ears upon.