Assassins are cool ….
Original trailer (better graphics) is here.
It could not come out faster (and, yes, I realize that sounds dirty).
A little Bleach love ….
Great little amv. Unfortunately I can’t link the video directly because it’s a myspace video, but it’s worth seeing if you’re a Bleach fan. You can find this video on YouTube but it’s low quality. I can’t tell you who made it – the myspacer or youtuber – but the myspace link above seems ten times better to me.
The band is Thousand Foot Krutch. While “Phenomenon” is probably their more popular song, they’ve made some other good ones too.
Here’s the YouTube one in case you have some weird myspace hatred, but the quality is poor.
Major geek eye-candy ….
Gamer geeks around the world must watch this video. While it has some played out Matrix tricks to it, it’s still pretty cool. Make sure to watch it all the way through even past the credits. You don’t have to thank me for finding it.
Bleach re-vamped ….
So if you haven’t seen it by now, I highly suggest you check out the anime/manga Bleach. I fully admit I’ve been apart of it’s massive following for quite awhile. I can’t say it’s revolutionary, but the series is just plain fun, and most anime fans will agree it’s entertainment value ranks pretty high. This last episode was no exception. For the full break down of the episode, I’d head on over to rakku’s blog for his summary of ep. 121 – spoiler warning. But here are a few of my humble thoughts and inputs.
- OPENER AND CLOSER – The most noticeable change this week was the new opener and closer. The opener had a lot to offer, and it took me a good 7 times to take it all in. Not only do we get a shot of Aqua Timez’s “Alone,” but we get to see Kon sing it! HA! But the main buzz about the opener is Orihime and Aizen. It’s pretty clear what’s gonna go down. Orihime has been a backdrop character for quite a while – stepping in to heal and give voice to some general worries and observations fans already feel. So it’s only fitting to insert her in the limelight. Of course her involvement will only spur on a new emotional level of danger for the whole Hueco Mundo plot. AND DID ANYONE NOTICE RUKIA?! That better be apart of her bankai. The closer is Ore Ska Band’s “Tsumasaki.” By the way, Ore Ska Band is coming to Long Beach, California’s Anime Expo® 2007 to perform June 29-July 2. I’m sure they’ll perform both this song and their Naruto closer “Pinocchio” so if you’re in the area I’d try to go. The opener was fairly uneventful besides hailing the inevitable presence of shinigami captains and lieutenants in Karakura town. Doesn’t Byakuya look funny in regular clothes. ^^
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NEW STAFFING – So regulars will have surely noticed the stylistic change in animation this week during the fight scenes, especially Ichigo’s and Grimmjow’s. This isn’t just your imagination. I’ve heard rumors that TV Tokyo and Studio Pierrot were going to change animators (specifically for the action sequences) but from what I’ve seen this seems to be true. The framing is different as well as the timing. The wider pans (like the shot of Ichigo standing up after being knocked to the ground the first time by Grimmjow) seem more cinematic than television. I love it, and I hope they keep pumping out more sequences like it.
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TIME LAPSE – So why did we not have a new episode last week. After much sneaking around in and out of Japanese internet sources and forums, I’ve pretty much determined it’s because of the manga. The Shonen Jump manga of Bleach must be released first. The TV series was coming dangerously close to the current weekly manga release, and, as a result, took a week long hiatus. This is the same reason for the whole random Bount episodes that were a unique storyline to the television series. Episodes 64-109 were created to fill the void while the manga took a break. 110 picks up where they left off in the manga.
- BLEACHED OUT – From the titles of the next 3 episodes (catch them here) I’m guessing we’ll see a lot more of Ichigo when he bleaches. Bring … it … on! This is the primary underlying theme to the whole damn story (Aizen’s Hueco Mundo uprising being the main plot). In next week’s episode, Ichigo returns to the Vizards – probably for information. I’m ready to see Ichigo’s story develop more. That’s part of what attracted me to Bleach – how conflicted our main character can be. Things are fixin’ to get white hot, people!
LOTR MMO RPG Pt. 1 ….
This past Friday, Turbine released the beta for Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. I signed up for a free beta profile and took it for a spin Friday before the mad Easter holiday (“PEEEEEEPS!”). There are pleanty of arguments for both sides of the mass reaction. I’ll try to give a simplified, unbiased review of my first 8 hours of game play and let you judge for yourself. I’ll make a lot of comparisons to WOW because more people are familiar with it as opposed to other MMORPGs.
I picked an elf (admittedly because I find them cool) and played around with the minstrel class while my finance chose a guardian elf. Now in the beta you can only choose from 4 races – men, dwarves, hobbits, and elves. With the exception of the dwarves you can choose between male and female. I personally thought it was funny you couldn’t choose a female dwarf especially since you never see them in the movies or hear much mention of them in the books. The classes seem to be pretty diverse but overall they’re similar to WOW but with different names. For instance, my “minstrel” is basically a priest, and the “guardian” is basically a tank/warrior. The “lore-master” class, for all practical purposes, is a mage, and a “burglar” is a rogue … so on and so forth. All the races share the same basic classes that you would expect them to. For instance, dwarves can’t be lore-masters but specialize in melee damage. The only exception are humans who can be “captains” – more or less a buffer. While I think these different names are interesting, I think Turbine could have used this opportunity to sway a little closer to the franchise. A hunter is really what the books name a “ranger” and “lore-masters” could have easily become “wizards.” I see a few reasons for not naming them these though. If a ranger and wizard class were available, there’d be no minstrels or captains. To a certain extent I feel Turbine wanted their MMO to drift separately from the movies and books without losing the storyline. For this reason they probably left more popular terms to NPCs.
Once you’ve selected your race and class, you can customize your character. A few differences here that makes LOTR more advanced than WOW. The choice of eye color is customizable on a color grid and not set options per 8 choices. Hair and skin tone are the same way. So your character can have brown hair but the number of brown hair combinations (light, dark, golden, reddish) are pretty satisfying. Also, body type can be altered – much the same way as SIMS. While I fully believe most people will choose the far-left-impossibly-skinny option, you can make your character a bit chunky if you so desire. Something totally unique to LOTR is the origin of the character. You may pick what city your character comes from (though this doesn’t change the starting location of the race in game play). For instance, my character hails from Lorien but I could have chosen from a host of other possibilities including Mirkwood and Rivendell. The origin of your character determines what kind of color palates you can chose from for your character’s hair and skin. So a Lorien elf will look completely different from a Mirkwood elf. Other races have origin choices as well. Humans may come from Bree, Dale, Gondor, or Rohan, while Dwarves can hail from Blue Mountains, Grey Mountains, Lonely Mountains, White Mountains, or Iron Hills. Hobbits can come from Fallohide, Stoor, or Harfoot. (other elf origins – Lindon or Edhellond)
Your character’s origin also calls up a naming guide. While it’s not necessary to follow this guide, it is an interesting way to suck players into the LOTR world. The origin of your character brings up a bunch of suffixes and prefixes to combine in any number of name options. For instance Rohan human names have different endings than Gondorian names. These are also tailored to the gender of your character. While this is pretty cool, I wouldn’t count on finding any of those name combinations in about a week – most of them will be taken. I spent several minutes trying different ones for my elf and wouldn’t you know! Most of those name combos had been swiped. I’m sure people will make plenty of “Noobkillrz” or “Ipeed.”
No matter your origin, gender, or class – all characters within your race start at the same location. For the beta (I don’t know if it’ll change) your starting quests take about 5 minutes to complete before they throw you into newbie areas (kind of like instances where you’re randomly thrown into different servers but it’s the same area and quests). I’m sure they do this for crowd control – especially on Friday. That being said, if you’re gonna party with someone, you’ll have to make sure you both went into the same area – otherwise when you’re invited into a “Fellowship” (party) it’ll ask if you want to change to where they are.
For me, the initial quests took a little longer because I messed with the HUGE variety of emotes – most of them pretty funny but obviously there for entertainment and not practicality. There are NO voice emotes that I can find and none of the physical emotes have sound to them (sorry kids, couldn’t find a train either). The initial interface settings were a bit clumsy. I’m sure someone will create some helpful add-ons later to make it more functional, but for the most part you can customize font colors and sizes on the options menu for chat. The mini map, camera controls, and chat boxes are pretty similar to WOW. There are a few personal pet peeves of mine (and probably nobody else). You can’t Shift+B to open all bags. It’s “I” for inventory and being the non-conformist bagger that I am I just changed it to “B.”
Once you get to vendors and trainers you’ll have a few issues that might throw you off. Selling items isn’t a right click in your bag slots anymore. You’ll need to pull up the “Sell” tab on the vendor screen and individually select items are “select all” (which that option will be obsolete after about 10 minutes of questing). Destroying items is basically the same. Buybacks have their own tab as well. One really nice change was the armor repair. You can do this with your trainer so no hunting down an armor merchant anymore (though they can if you come across one).
The minstrel class is pretty interesting – seems to be much easier to solo quest with than with a priest in WOW. Minstrels rock out on their lutes and different songs deal out damage or heal others, and the damage doled out is pretty significant. Initially you train for one tune that does both. The songs are also in “tiers” meaning you can’t play a “tier 2″ song without first strumming a “tier 1.” Minstrels are also given a few melee attack moves, but the songs are more helpful.
Unlike WOW, there is a Deeds System. The system works in a number of ways, but its basic function is to reward you. For instance, you’re given rewards for the constant use of your trained abilities. There are bars that indicate how often you’re using a particular ability. Once the bar is filled you gain a permanent stat point of some kind. But don’t think this is easy – you need to use your ability A LOT to make any progress on that damn bar. A similar bar appears for different kills as well, but, instead of rewarding you with a stat, you’re given a title of distinction that you may have displayed next to your name. For instance one bar becomes filled when you kill a certain amount of wolves. Once you’ve filled the bar your name can appear with the following title: “Name, Wolf Tamer.” You have a title option at the very beginning of game play. You can either just display your name only or “Name of Rivendell.” Other titles can be awarded through completion of quests within a certain area or even just staying alive. If you survive the first 5 levels without being killed once, you gain the title “Name the Wary.” At level nine I had amassed four different titles. Interestingly enough, you can gain a title through family ties. LOTR gives players the option of “adopting” each other. These produce titles such as “name, son of suchandsuch.” The books and movies are both very concerned with titles (Gimli, son of Gloin – Gandalf the Grey) so it’s fitting your characters can gain different titles.
LOTR is a highly quest orientated game. There are no PVP opportunities in the open world without entering a “monster arena.” While some have major complaints about this, others welcome the chance to quest in peace. I can see both sides. The PVP enabled servers of WOW can be both annoying and highly frustrating, but they can also be more stimulating thought wise. For instance, you game in suspicion and your mind must always take into account different factors – what’s my level difference compared to that guy over there, I need to sneak around that Alliance town, is that guy PVP enabled in a safe zone. It makes you think more. That’s not to say questing is mindless – I enjoy it very much. But after playing on a PVP server for a while I can see how “safe” LOTR feels. For people who don’t like straight forward questing, I can see LOTR as a let down. For those who enjoy the game for what it is and not what you make it out to be, LOTR is potentially a great source of enjoyment. XP mainly comes from questing and instances can’t be done without a “fellowship” (group) so fulfilling the needs of the NPCs are pretty key. That being said, the dialog is pretty intricate forcing you to pay attention to the NPCs and really emphasizing the story line of the game. Guilds are “kinships” by the way – I haven’t messed with one yet so I can’t tell you much about them.
OH! I nearly forgot to mention graphics – Kick Ass. I was really impressed by the graphics (just take a close up look at a fox). The environment is awesome, thought the character graphics need a little work – a little on the matted side for me. But if you want true proof of Turbine’s fantastic graphics work, take a look at puddles or shiny floors in certain buildings like a library or history archival room. The glossy reflection of your character will literally floor you (haha, floor). Have your lore-master take a dip in the river – the water affects are pretty advanced these days. At night, look up at a pretty aweome starry sky. Oh what a long way we’ve come from Frogger. The graphics on a mount (no flight paths, but travel paths you use on a rent-a-horse) are pretty. The cinematic clips in between loading screens aren’t bad, but they aren’t anything dramatically advanced.
Crafting is a whole other entry for another day.
My general impressions overal:
- the graphics are pretty well advanced in comparison to WOW
- race choices are pretty limited, but classes are pretty well engineered
- this is a quest motivated game so PVP is limited to designated areas and for both reasons solo questing is pretty easy
- interface can use some tweaking, nothing add ons won’t fix in the future
- innovative use of the LOTR story line without making it too cheesy
- deeds, titles, origins, and family lines original MMO concepts
Traveling on horseback – check out the graphics on the trees alone!
WOTD #2 ….
KAITE KUDASAI = write please (pronounced “k-I(eye)-te koo-da-s-I(eye)”)
So I thought I’d explain my blog’s title today. I created this blog to keep me writing (aside from my actual writing projects). This is a common phrase in Japanese schools just as our teachers frequently say “please write this down.” It’s a command more than a request. “Kaite” is the command form of “write.” However, “kaite” can take on other forms according to tense and usage, just as “write” can become “wrote” and “written.” “Kudasai” is a very, very common word often attached to a command. Its presence implies a polite command roughly translated to the phrase “please do for me.”
WOTD #1 ….
So I’ve decided to make a daily post of Japanese words/phrases. Not because I’m insulting your intelligence, oh dear reader, but rather because I think the Japanese culture is cool. I’m nearing the end of my second full year of language study and I’ve learned so much from my language exchange partners. They are a younger couple working here in the states through the husband’s job transfer – sadly they’ll be returning to Japan later this year. So to further my education and to deal out interesting facts I have started … (drumroll please)
KAITE KUDASAI’S WORD OF THE DAY!
If anyone is interested in a specific word or phrase or custom, leave me a comment and I’ll try my best to answer. And if you find a mistake I’ll try my best to correct it provided my entry really was wrong. Otherwise, here goes …
ICHI = one (pronounced “ee-chee”)
I chose “ichi” for a few reasons. First off, this is the first KAITE KUDASAI’S WORD OF THE DAY! Secondly, it’s a part of several Japanese words and phrases. “Ichi” is the counting word* for the number one. Ichiban (the brand of Japanese beer) is the word equivalent to our phrase “the best” or “number one ____”. Pretty bold statement for the beer! “Ichi” is also used in names. For instance, “Ichigo,” the main character in the manga and anime Bleach, is thought to have a good name, because his name loosely translates “one” and “go” from “hogosha” meaning guardian (according to the series). This would mean “number one guardian” or “one who protects.” Quite appropriate for the series. His name literally translates to “one” and “five,” because “go” is the counting word* for the number five. A third meaning isn’t quite so obvious. “Ichigo” is also a word for “strawberry” and can generally be a girl’s name. In the case of Bleach, it can inadvertently refer to his odd hair color.
*NOTE: In Japan there are many types of words for counting. I am very aware of this. For the sake of explanation in this entry, “counting word” refers to the name of the number and not the different counting words for objects. Real counting words are a whole new ballgame, and I’ll leave that for another day. ^^
Tarren Mill, you’re dead to me ….
Aside from my cheesy allusion to The Colbert Report (freedom with balls), this is about an ending relationship. I have to quit you Tarren Mill, and yet it’s so hard saying goodbye. It’s just not working for me anymore, what with your constant boredom motivated ganking episodes and our fights about what location that level 69 Hunter is creeping around from (it’s always from the west entrance, damn it!). When did it stop working? How did we get this way?
I used to fly in on the weekends, rid you of your bears, mountain lions, and spider ichor. You said the bat was cute. But then you were raided ….. excessively. I used to level my fishing on your banks until a Priest found me – my fishing pole didn’t stand a chance. The death of the Herbalism trainer right in front of my face was the last straw. I wanted to leave, but then the bat handler was arcaned to death.
You can blame it on Southshore if you want, but we know it’s really your fault. The sensible town would have level 70 NPCs in such a high traffic zone – but nooOOOOoooo. You wanted level 45 Deathguards because Death = Cool. Well I’m sick of it, and my intellect tells me to quest elsewhere. So long, Tarren Mill. May you frustrate more PVP-ers till your heart’s content. At least the graveyard is near by.
The “I’ll watch it later” syndrome ….
I’m a procrastinator. I admit to showing up late, sleeping in, and making up the best believable excuses. When I was in college I had to keep track of which excuses I had presented to which teachers so my carefully planned skip days wouldn’t backfire. I’m sure there are others like me. It’s part of human nature for some of us. We can’t handle most 9 to 5 jobs because there’s too much sleep being missed out on – too much time that could be spent under the covers with a good book or on the computer blogging about skipping work. don’t worry, I’m currently unemployed
After being a “do it later” member for several years there is one device that tailors to my delayed lifestyle. That’s right, I’m talkin’ bout TiVo. Now I don’t possess said brand, but I do have a DVR from my cable provider and it does the same things with the exception I have two tuners so I can record two things at once, and it doesn’t have the cute noises and cartoon intro when it’s powered on. The DVR is my best friend – no more missing Janice Dickinson bitch about her models or Anthony Bourdain sampling local foreign fare because I can’t stop playing the auction house on WOW. It’s all there, waiting for me when I have the time. It stores all my Daily Shows and Colbert Reports, all my South Parks and Project Runways. I can watch what I want and skip all the commercials.
But alas, the DVR is also the enemy. Any self-proclaimed procrastinator in possession of a DVR/TiVo would understand what I’m talking about. Currently on my DVR sits two of the last Heroes episodes. This is a travesty. If I hadn’t had the DVR I would have cleared my schedule to watch them when they aired (it’s a kick-ass series), but the DVR taunts me – you can watch these another time …. don’t be rushed …. and while you’re at it, you can wait and call your mother tomorrow.
IT’S EVIL!
At one point I had 6, count ‘em, 6 Smallvilles awaiting my attention. Granted, when I sat down to watch them all it was an enjoyable festival of superhero drama, but still – has the DVR made me procrastinate my enthusiasm for small town justice? The DVR both caters to my style and makes it worse at the same time. I guess I could change it to have programs deleted after a week, but wouldn’t that defeat the purpose of it?
Oh, and I will watch those dust covered Heroes soon. It’s on my very long “to-do” list.
