I'm back on June 2nd. I'm really looking forward to the time I'm going to be able to spend with my friends, family, and most importantly, consoles. There are quite a few games that I missed out on since January, where I held off from buying any games before going off to Japan. So now that my return is nigh, I wanted to run through the list of what I'm planning on purchasing.
I'll be going through each console, and listing games with a sentence or two as to why I'm interested in it. A lot of this is based off of little knowledge of the title, so feel free to correct me if my impression is by and far wrong. Let me know if I'm missing anything, too. Also, no Xbox 360 games on here, because I don't own the console. Unless, of course, someone is going to ship me an Xbox 360 out of the kindness of their heart.
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First off, let's start with Nintendo's little box with some swing to it. My Wii library is notoriously unfinished: Red Steel and Escape from Bug Island are waiting to be 100% completed, while Mario Galaxy and Twilight Princess are barely touched. Let's make that list even worse.
Boom Blox: After the review went up, and hearing Rev talk about it on Podtoid, my interest was piqued. I need something light and easy to balance out my RPG-heavy diet.
Mario Kart Wii: Japan has been advertising this game like crazy. With my group of friends at home and school, I know there's no chance to avoid playing this game fairly frequently. Also, Chester liked it.
House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return: I love lightgun games with a passion. They're always the first thing I run to in arcades, and I still have the first two stages of Time Crisis 3 memorized.
Super Smash Brothers Brawl: Brawl is probably the title that I least want to buy on this list. The Brawl fanatics turn me off to the series, and well, my roommate is one. There will be no fun found in playing with them. But JESUSCHRISTITSTHEBESTGAMEONTHEWIIADS;LGKJAGKLFG.
No More Heroes: I wanted to buy this game so bad when I was in the U.S., but had to hold off because, frankly, I had very little time to play this. I'm looking to beat the shit out of some people on the Wii.
Deca Sports: Yes, it's plastered all over the website, but I'm just curious to try out something that reminds me of ye ol' Track and Field. I guess it's some sick, self-abusive desire.
Castle of Shikigami III: It goes pew pew pew. Haven't heard the verdict in from Topher, but the reviews (if you read the text and not the numbers) seem to be fine.
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Alright, time to touch myself with the DS. Yes, prepare for all of these phrases to be fucking cheesy.
The World Ends With You: A Square-Enix title that isn't a sequel? I'll give it a shot to see if the old magic of my favorite Squaresoft titles is still there.
Professor Layton and the Curious Village: People have been playing this game all the time while I've been here in Japan, so I figure I might as well give in.
Teenage Zombies: Invasion of the Alien Brain Thingys: Zombies? Plus. Colette's [url=http://www.destructoid.com/destructoid-review-teenage-zombies-invasion-of-the-alien-brain-thingys--84776.phtml]slightly
wary review[/url]? Minus. Still want to give it a try.
Advance Wars: Days of Ruin: Tactics. I'm a whore for it. Is this worth it, or should I go ahead and finish up Soul Nomad instead?
Rondo of Swords: Just going off the boxart.
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Now onto the Sony stuff. Let's start with portable and move up.
R-Type Command: It goes pew pew pew, too. And Dale liked it.
Patapon: The game has been sold out in stores here, that's the only reason it's still on this list.
God of War: Chains of Olympus: Well, I guess there's the slight problem of not having played any God of War title. But I figure I'll pick these up before playing this.
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII: I don't have the sort of enmity that others seem to have for the series, so I want to try it out.
Wild Arms XF: It's a tactics RPG now. Jesus, I should play a different type of RPG, shouldn't I?
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Alright, time to move onto the PS2. Well, the PS2 inside of my PS3, technically. I suppose I could've used images to break these things up, but I don't have the Internet connection for fancy images.
Twisted Metal: Heads On: I'm looking to smash some cars together for no good reason.
Baroque: Despite Colette's review, I still want to give this game a shot. I'm not expecting her to be wrong, I just want to see the points she made for myself.
Persona 3: FES: I already own the original Persona 3, but I am a bit of a sucker for new content. Haven't picked up the Subsistence MGS titles yet, though.
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Now finally, the PS3. The black behemoth of love.
Army of Two: I bought into the hype when this game was first announced. Despite the less than stellar reviews the game has received, I still want to sit down and go through some overly-violent shooting that isn't Kane and Lynch.
Burnout Paradise: I'm not usually one to play the Burnout series. The motion blur was a bit much for me when I watched a friend play it. But the reviews for this game were praiseworthy enough for me to want to try it out.
The Club: The sound of mass-slaughter, while being done stylistically, sounds like a lot of fun.
Devil May Cry 4: I should probably play 1-3 first, shouldn't I?
Condemned 2: It got surprisingly good reviews. I was just wondering how necessary it is to play the first one?
Just to mention it, you can stalk me on Twitter if you're so inclined. A good chunk of the Japanator staff has followed suit and pokes around on there. There's dtoid staff as well, but I'll let you discover everyone for yourselves.
So, if you have the distinct urge to know when I might be pooping, you can do it on twitter.
I'm in the future, and since Topher's off enjoying himself in Cancun, Fridaying it so hard he doesn't have ready Internet, I'm preparing you for some Friday action.
Now that you've been prepared, FRIDAY THE FUCK OUT OF YOUR LIFE!!!!!111
It's called "the Internet." As I mentioned before, I'm in an old house, and so it's been nigh-impossible to get connected to the Internet after school hours. So, I've been shouting from rooftops that I have Internet once again, and I figured since you've taken a moment to check out this page, I'd humor you with a bit about my host family.
My host family is old. That's how it seems to be with most of my friends' host families here at Kansai Gaidai. Usually, they're in their seventies, and their kids have moved out. Mine is certainly no exception.
When I was first going to meet them, I was nervous as all hell. These people weren't shop clerks or Japanese teachers -- these people were real Japanese people. And I would have to live with them. Of course, only my oka-san (I'll be using this to refer to my host mother) showed up to pick me up and go over the schedule. We drove home, and it was relatively quiet, except for oka-san constantly honking at every other car, and giving me directions on how to get to the house.
I come home to meet oto-san, and get settled into my room. Then, oka-san goes off to work on dinner. They decide to quiz me on how to get to the school, which in my blundering Japanese and thanks to my poor memory, forces oto-san (my host father) to get up and drive me around to jog my memory. While I'm riding with him, I notice that there's a quarter-full bottle of whiskey sitting right next to him. Jesus, am I going to die after only a week in Japan?
Thankfully, my memory kicks in from there, once he showed me a much simpler way to school, along the major roads. When we get back, I notice another peculiar thing: oto-san only has five fingers. One of his hands is nothing more than just a palm with barely anything more than a knub for fingers.
Once it gets to dinnertime, the entire family comes over, because it also happens to be time to celebrate the Chinese new year, or something of the like. Pretty much every Sunday, some members of the family come over for dinner, and we watch some TV. I'm quickly introduced to everyone in the family, and I have never heard their names again. My host family expects me to know everyone's name, relation to the family, and probably blood type. I've even tried asking oka-san one day how old each of her kids were. No luck there. "Oh, the oldest is 46, then..."
The next day, while we're sitting at dinner, my host family asks me to explain the American electoral system. There is no way that my study of Japanese could have prepared me for this. I felt absolutely helpless, and it was one of those times when you just wanted to cry. It only took me a whole 20 minutes to convince my oka-san that Canada was not part of the United States.
This is a problem I've noticed when dealing with Japanese people: first, they assume you know nothing. Once you actually open your mouth, they assume you can speak only some really basic phrases. After you form an actual sentence, they assume you're perfectly fluent. They'll go into a whole big story, and then when they expect you to say something, you only disappoint them by saying, "sorry, I don't understand." Like when my oto-san tried to get my opinion on the Japanese space program. When it took me a while to understand the term for "unmanned spacecraft," he made fun of me.
It's a love-hate relationship with my host family. They speak in Osaka-ben, I don't understand them. They laugh at me, and I consume immense quantities of their food.
I figured I'd answer this, since some people were surprised to see me only tackling two whole posts this month.
While I am in Japan, my host family's house is extremely old. Like, 100+ years old. Thus, I am left without Internet, because my host family would have no decent need for it, and their youngest kid is 30 -- so he left the house in the early 90s, long before there'd be any need to subscribe to the Internet.
Thus, I find it kinda hard to write when I have no real connection to what's going on (except when I waste my time between classes), and I have plenty of exploring to do within Japan. Plus, I've only got a handful of games to play through, limiting my urge to write about anything.
Something's coming, though. Fear not. Plus, when I get back from Japan, I'll be posting a lot more frequently.
ohai. I'm in Japan. As you're well aware, cell phones = life here in Japan. Texting while biking provides me with lulz, sure, but right now it is also a painful reminder of how poorly I fit into society right now. I am in possession of neither a phone (aka keitai) or a bicycle (aka coolmobile).
So, I need money to buy a Gundam phone. I need it. Ignore the fact that it's the most expensive phone in the Softbank store, coming in at $580 without the plan -- without the Char phone, I am nothing. Plus, the phone comes with a helmet to put it in. A HELMET.
Right now, funds are at $0/$580. Help me reach my goal.
In three days. I'll be leaving New Jersey on Jan. 25th (Friday) at 6am to head off to Osaka, until June 2nd. I'll probably be MIA from Destructoid and Japanator, but will hopefully have decent Internet access. But who knows -- I might be able to update just fine.
Anyways, I will be taking tons of photos, and no, I won't be doing an 8 million part blog about it. Most likely flickr and some weekly highlights over on Vox. Now I'll actually use it regularly! :O
<p>There are some people that you just hate. Whether it be Uwe Boll or Shia LaBeouf, there is someone that completely ruins your hopes and dreams, and you want him dead. For me, that person is Roger Avary, the screenwriter for <i>Silent Hill</i>. While he's not dead in a flaming car wreck, the screenwriter was arrested under suspicion of DUI, after getting in a car crash around 1 a.m. this morning. Avary was travelling with his wife, Gretchen, and a friend, Andreas Zedini. Avary's wife was flung from the car, and Zedini was killed. He posted $50,000 bail, after being charged with felony driving under the influence and spending some time in Ventura County Jail. Avary won an Oscar for co-writing <i>Pulp Fiction </i>with Tarantino, and worked on <i>Beowulf </i>from last year. My whole problem with Roger Avary, so that you know, was the writing debacle known as <i>Silent Hill</i>. He "didn't want to be constrained by the original work," creating the <i>Silent Hill</i> film that we've come to know. On the other hand, the director, Christophe Gans, made a bunch of people play the first game so they could understand what it was like. But no, Avary didn't want to pay attention, and instead turned Pyramid Head into just a boss instead of the manifestation of James' guilt. Now that I'm done with that little vent, let's see what happens to him as this case develops.</p><p>[Via ShackNews]</p>
People usually turn to me as the purveyor of all things weird. Whether it's because I spam the Destructoid staff emails with hentai or show people videos of shows that they may not understand (also see Yakitate!! Japan, The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, and Le Chevalier D'Eon), it seems that just because I run Japanator, I automatically have an explanation for all of Japan's fetishes.
Well, the above video is meant to show something: Japan isn't the only messed up country in the world. That was an ad from Korea, advertising ice cream. Now, I might've missed that, so perhaps I should watch it again. ...nope, not really getting the focus on ice cream.
I'm the Features Editor here on Destructoid. If you were to consider Nick the father figure of the editorial team, then I guess that makes me the housewife. So, brownies for everyone, then!
