The Wheel of Fate is Turning!

This is a great year for fighting fans so far. We got Street Fighter IV, re-releases of Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves and King of Fighters 98 Ultimate Match, both with online play, King of Fighters XII coming out soon and looking extremely good, and this little game called BlazBlue:Calamity Trigger.

Let's go straight to the point here: if you are a fighting game fan, chances are you heard of the cult favorite Guilty Gear series. And if you are a fan of said game, you need to go pick up BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger. Right now.

BlazBlue is the new Aksys fighting game for Xbox360 and PS3 developed on the Arc Systems plataform. From the same design team from the Guilty Gear series, this brawler is the spiritual sequel to the last Guilty Gear game, an evolution of the series that takes the frenetic fighting action of GG to the next level.

You can expect everything you know and love from GG here. Hand drawn high resolution character sprites, beautiful fluid animation, creative character designs, crazy voice overs, engrish sentences("Let's enjoy a great showtime!"), and a great soundtrack, matching the pace and mood of the game's unique universe.



Not only all the factors are there, but the game is really damn fun. Having a simplified four button layout reminiscent of the Samurai Shodown series(weak,medium, strong, and a special button) it makes it easier for newcomers to have fun. That does not indicate, however, that the game lacks depth. On the contrary, the game still has the deep technical aspects any respected fighter of this caliber should have.



The art design in this game is incredible. Beautiful 3D backgrounds. Creative characters, all with their respective insignias that show a lot of work and attention to detail. Crazy concepts like the Shy-Guy gooey Arakune and his insects, bad ass hero Hakumen, Iron Tager and his magnetic powers and so on. Each character has a playing mechanic specific to themsleves. For example, the sexy doctor Litchi has her staff that she can throw around the stage, leave it at places, jump on top of it and control it like a marionette, while the vampire girl Rachel controls the wind to her advantage to strategically place opponents in range of her traps. Ninja hero wannabe Bang uses railroad nails to fight, and he places devices around the screen that propels like a dash effect. Little boy Carl controls a puppet that fights for him with its own life bar, while the crazy psychopath Jin uses ice element attacks to freeze the enemy. As you can see, every character plays in different mechanics and it adds so much diversity to the game.

The music also feels like an evolution from the GG franchise. Don't get me wrong, I loved the GG soundtrack, but this feels more well thought-out, more in tune with it's respective character's personalities and stages. Like in GG, there are the special songs depending on the characters fighting, nemesis, or story advancement.

The game has a lot to offer as far as play modes go: arcade mode, story attack mode(more like get-my-ass-kicked mode), story mode, network mode, replay mode(which you can download from other players on the leaderboards and watch), training mode, and galleries of unlockables. Story mode alone has a lot of replay value all in itself. Every charachter has a story to play through, told through a series of voice acting and scenes of the characters between their fights. Also, each character's story has multiple branched paths, and the story unfolds based on your choices and fighting methods at key events.



Network mode is where you fight people online. The netcode on this game is very competent, as I have yet to experience any signs of lag during any of my matches. The game lags a little bit before the fight starts while it synchronizes the players data, but by the time the fight starts everything is caught up and smooth.



With all these modes, the branching stories, and characters that all play very differently from one another, this is a lot of bang for your buck. Specially if you pick up the inital print of special editions that are the same price as the regular game, and have a DVD with strategies and combos for every character, as well as a two CDs of the game's well composed soundtrack. Basically, if you are a fan of fighting games, you need to pick up BlazBlue. Specially if you are a fan of Guilty Gear. This is the next step up, and what a beautiful, intense, crazy step this is.

Disappointment is an understatement

I went to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen with my brother yesterday. I didn't have high hopes by any means, as you learn when you are a seasoned fan of comic books and videogames but...

What a waste if time.

Although I don't like Michael Bay for being such a talentless, unoriginal director, I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the first Transformers movie. Nevermind the fact that he changed so much crap from TF lore, and really butchered some characters, not to mention the focus on humans on a movie where the Transformers weren't even the main protagonists of the story.

But it was still an entertaining movie. Flawed, but entertaining. I'm not as elitist as most fans when it comes to comic book/cartoons/videogame movies, its a given that they will change stuff around, and probably screw up our fond childhood memories. You basically come to terms that you will probably be disappointed and head out to the theater. But TF2 brings disappointment from comic books/cartoon movies to new heights.

First off, what is the point of the character list that was published to get everyone all excited in anticipation? Why introduce all these characters when they either end up lasting about a minute on the entire film, or are wasted by insignificant roles. Just off the top of my mind, let's see:

-Sideways: dies a minute after he is shown,

-Arcee: had two useless scenes that each lasted about 30 seconds,

-Scorponok: fatally attacks Jetfire for about 15 seconds then dies,

-Ratchet, Jolt, Ironhide, and Sideswipe: all these guys ended up being as significant as army drones in the background along the humans. Providing covering fire? Might as well not have the robots there at all,

-Soundwave: one of the most loved badasses amongst the fans ends up being in space the entire movie, he doesn't even transform or fight, his trademark vocoder-synthesized voice and sound effects are nowhere to be found,

-Blackout: for someone that is supposed to be 3rd in command on the Decepticons ranks(as far as the movie adaptation story goes) this guy died really damn quick a minute after showing up,

-Devastator: I dont even know where to begin with this one. The only time the Constructicons transformed into their individual selves was to jump in the water to bring back Megatron, and neither one of them showed any of their personalities, talked or anything. Actually, not even the bad-ass Devastator himself said a word the entire movie, save some guttural sounds here and there. They got this super strong, 200ft tall Decepticon and what do they decide to do with him? Put him to waste half of his screen time breaking a pyramid appart before getting killed by a railgun. Really? A freaking railgun kills Devastator? Let's not even talk about the balls mr. Michael Macho Bay put there.

All these great characters wasted. No personality traits shown, barely any dialogue between them. They tried to show a bit of the Megatron and Starscream relationship, and that was executed very poorly. Megatron(who's name should really be Galvatron here) had his tank form and used it for nothing.

There were 5 Transformers that could change into aircrafts: Starscream, Megatron, Blackout, Soundwave, and Jetfire, yet there was no air combat whatsoever. I can't even begin to think of the amazing scenes that could come out of these guys.

One of the only things they did I actually liked, was that it was Soundwave who deployed Ravage(like it should be, albeit it wasn't a cassete tape shooting out of a tape player this time), and the battle scene in the forest with Starscream, Megatron and Blackout VS Optimus Prime.

Its very sad that so many great characters were wasted so badly. I really wanted to like this movie for having a great robot cast, only to find out that most of their roles are brief, insignificant moments within the 149 minutes of tired cliches, racism, Obama bashing, army commercials, horrible jokes, one liners, bad acting, and dogs humping.

The movie was way too long, horrible pacing, and the "dialogue" if you want to call it that, was a simple conjuction of one liners. The humor couldn't be dumber. I don't know who honestly thinks any of those stupid jokes were funny, specially with the reliance on racial stereotypes. The twins who spoke in slang, had gold teeth, it was insinuated that they can't read, and were obviously representing the African American stereotype. Only in Michael Bay movies you hear lines like "I'ma bust a cap on yo ass" and "I'm too old for this". There were obvious hints of Obama bashing. Dog's humping and pot brownie-eating mothers are not substitutes for clever humor, which obviously is way above Michael Bay's brain capacity.

The annoying constant focus on the army, just to show off how much of a boner Michael Bay has for showing how "down" he is with the military gets very old over the course of the movie. And one of the worst decisions he could have made is to add the infamous, stupid "testicles" to Devastator at a key moment near the film's end. Is this really someone's idea of funny? Its an insult to the character.

The final battle of the movie was incredibly anti-climatic. It felt rushed and boring. Specially after a two-hour lead up to a climax that feels like it never happened.

I guess I have nothing else to say that all the other reviews aren't already saying. It just upsets me that not only was it a horrible, utter craptastic movie in every sense, but the robots were butchered and underultilized to an extent where anyone that was a fan of the cartoons is going to be very disappointed by all the wasted potential.

/rant off

King of Fighters XII

, originally uploaded by Himzka.

KOFXII will be out soon and I am totally stoked for that. A completely new engine Street Fighter IV and King of Fighters XII in the same year?

So awesome. Gotta get back in shape with my girl Leona.

(photo of KOFXI machine at what used to be Rocky's Replay. RIP)

StarSlight

shooting stars or airplanes?, originally uploaded by Himzka.

All we ever see of stars are their old photographs.

Is it heavier than air?

Day number thirty four.

It has become apparent now, that the rest of the crew are no longer to be found.

Into the ventilation shaft it seeped, and one by one, the life support systems failed on empty.