I'm at an impasse. Ideas are in my head and they are doing things that could be considered mildly intelligent, however my hands don't want to take those ideas and transcribe them in to any thing that could be considered quality. So instead you get me rambling on about a bunch of nothing like usual.

You're welcome.



I'm usually a huge proponent of musings around here and I still am. However, this weekly musing stuff is leaving me burnt out. I had really wanted to recap EVO for the e sports thing and well...that was last week's topic. It's time to move on to a new topic. It didn't help that EVO was widely covered by everyone with the surge of last years popularity. TWO MILLION viewers on the stream. Incredible.

The fact that Dtoid has cut out embeds also kinda kills the highlight moments of the tournament. So, I'll pass up doing that. A crazy good Haku-men winning BlazBlue was awesome though. Just thought I'd throw that out for all those people only paying attention to SSF4AE and MVC3.



We have an East vs West showdown this week, which almost exclusively means RPG wars. I'm sure some really creative blogs analyzing Keiji Inafune's claims of stagnation and more importantly, the rappers that have come out of this terrible war will arise. M-Flo and Ice-T in particular had a terrible past.

Me, I have a half written piece on the rise of the Strategy RPGs across both continents starting with Chess and Shogi and progressing until League of Legends and Disgaea 4. So far it's mostly garbage with loose ideas thrown on to paper. I'm feeling unmotivated at the beginning of the 1980s with Computer Bismarck and Utopia and those types.

Meh. I'll try to finish, but I've been playing the crap out of my PSP lately. So much so that blogging has become an after thought.



Probably the whole reason I've been in this rut is my arthritis froze my hip up last weekend and pain killers were unfortunately necessary. It has since popped and relieved itself. This pain however led to some serious gaming. I think my eyes are strained from the long plays on the PSP.

While I've got a boat load of games, I only really focused on two. I had a post planned about games that really make you feel good when feeling bad and Zettai Hero Project was the whole reason for it. Probably won't post that blog however because I'd have to actually think about games other than ZHP and I really don't play a lot of feel good crap.

ZHP is completely about trying to beat the negativity out of the people of the world as you grind your way back to being a Super Hero. I actually got to knock the crap out of the President of the United States for thinking that sacrificing few to save the many was a noble pursuit. After that I punched a nuke in to SPACE.

Good times. I also think this is probably one of Disgaea Team's better games. It's a lot more focused than the Disgaea games and it has a simple enough system that is explained in a slow enough matter to actually work. Plus I don't have to toss people around. God I have an unrelenting hate for tossing people in Disgaea games.



The current game I'm burning through is Yggdra Union. I'm really sorry Atlus. That you had to wait for me to play this game on the PSP. It's very good. I suggest running to Gamestop and buying a $15 new copy of Knights in the Nightmare (remember to search for the voucher) just to get the game if you enjoy a good SRPG. It does suffer from "what do you mean I can't kill you yet" syndrome. Bosses won't die without some unknown condition that has to be focused on first. It's stupid, it doesn't detract from anything, but it is stupid.

Gameplay in Yggdra Union is super solid and it just keeps expanding on itself. The game initially restricts itself by simplifying the system in to a standard bare bones SRPG. Then it starts adding advantage disadvantage elements similar to Pokemon or Fire Emblem. Then it adds combo pairing. Then it adds special attacks. Then it adds greater emphasis on combo pairing.

It's addicting to say the least.

Right now however Yggdra just ran off to attack the big bad on her own and got kidnapped. Sure, just run off after the guy that has a special attack called GENOCIDE. Nothing bad will happen. She's been a normal character and almost likable for most the game, but she just toed the line and I seriously can't stand this kind of annoying character twist.



Sorry for breaking the failings of the female protagonist down, but I just think that there are three terrible stereotypes that women in games keep falling in to. Stupid heroine, super heroine and useless heroine syndromes plague the industry. I wish there were a better adjective to place on these, but I think this wording gets the idea across quite clearly. Plus as I've explained before my mind is narrowed right now and my verbiage is breaking down terribly.

To actually escape these categories creates normal and natural characters that I have no ill will towards. Characters like Samus before Other M, Jade, and Tali. Decent characters that have confidence and a bit of humility. Well maybe not Samus, but Samus really was a blank slate for a lot of people to turn in to their own character.

Stupid heroines are the people that just do really dumb things simply to do them. They do something that just makes you yell at the screen. Yggdra just did that when she decided to leave the party after clearing out her castle to take on a general all by her lonesome.

A useless heroine is that girl who does absolutely nothing for anybody and gets rewarded for this. Also known as the Nagisa Furukawa syndrome. It's a huge issue in dating sims as the girl just seems to have a forced push behind her as some thing that I have to take care of. Sorry, I like women that can do things for themselves. This can actually be subverted extremely easily by giving the character a talent and a goal that she can accomplish. However, if nothing appears, it is simply maddening.



A super heroine is the typical western gaming trope. She is the strong powerful female that just happens to be batshit insane in her confidence. There is a certain amount of humility that has to come across all characters. Hubris and whatnot. Men get off easier because easily written characters that follow this trait are common place. It's lazy, but we've come to expect it after centuries of using this style. Thus when we get well written lead male characters, they must be looked on with amazement and a bit of hesitance.

Females however don't get this luxury. They've been ancillary characters for the better part of gaming's early years. When they did enter the scene, we expected more out of them. Something smarter. Instead, we got sex appeal. To justify that, men created them as uber confident femme fatales. They then turned in to Super Bitches. Early Lara Croft was definitely one of these. Anybody remember that time she let her Sherpa get eaten by wolves? That's why I've always had a thing against the character.

Note, these traits don't exclusively apply to women. Snow from FFVII is definitely a Super Bitch. Most secondary male characters are simply stupid. They also get killed at some point and I'm okay with that. Any guy in a harem anime has to be a useless idiot, at least until the end when he actually mans up for once. However, women seem to aggravate me more because I expect something better out of the characters. Bias I guess you could call that.

Blah, I guess I'm done with all this classifying. I just don't like the fact that I finally get a major victory in the game and my nice little Yggdra goes off and does something insane. Let me enjoy my spoils! I just invaded and took over a castle! Why do I have to invade another one? I'm doing some rescue the princess garbage for somebody I've been kicking ass with the entire game.



So I've been watching virtually no anime this season. I started watching Baka to Test thanks to the Dtoid ads and it's a pretty good show. Quality comedic timing, love triangles, the incest driven older sister is a bit much, but the other characters have a nice balance.

That's pretty much it and I'm getting tired of waiting for new episodes. I might have to dive in to some shonen garbage to facilitate my anime needs this season as I think I've tapped the well on old shows I can watch. Blah.

I need some more harem, triangle, comedy, quality anime or really any combination of the above. Shame there are a few shows that I want to see that aren't streaming and would have to be gotten illicitly if I did intend to watch them. I hope it doesn't come to that as I do enjoy supporting streaming anime services fully.



This week has been a pretty weird week for stuff around me. In a bad way. Wife works retail clothing store and she got looted $3,000 worth of product from 8 or so people doing a snatch and grab. So she had to turn her 8 hour shift in to a 13 hour shift to deal with the cops. Then there was an accident right outside of her store. Paddles were used. That's all we really know.

A fugitive was shot 3 blocks away from there a few hours before.

A woman killed her 2 kids and attempted (and failed so far) to take her own life a block or so down the street from us. To see that kind of news with a house that looks eerily similar to your own is a bit shocking.

My sister's boyfriend got in an accident while they were moving her in. Somebody plowed in to him and totaled their car. He was using a Suburban so they were unscathed.

London is burning. This has the least to do with me, but I visited London a lot in my youth and this is pretty sad to see. I hope this all calms down and the people that have exploited this turmoil to do horrible acts have to answer for their crimes. I understand protest, I don't condone vandalism. This has been disgusting.



Elsa got reamed on her blog for absolutely no reason from members of the fighting game community. Clearly not as awful as any of those other events, but I feel like I should expand on it because I plain don't like stupid shit.

I've heard people say that she used inaccurate facts, but I read the post a few times and there was not one actual sentence that can be considered factual. There is a LOT of opinion and they all tie back to her preconceived definitions. Those definitions are still opinion.

Barack Obama is President of the United States as of the date this post goes live. That is a fact.

"Videogames will likely never become as popular as true sports, very simply because they are not a sport -- they are a GAME." This is an opinion.

Get your panties out of the twist they are in and stop being a fuckwad. "Gaming is gaming." No matter what, we're all supposed to be having fun. Internet fuckwad theory doesn't apply to people that put their names in their twitter accounts.


For all those that were bothered by the fact that Nintendo did nothing for Samus Aran's 25th this year, here's a couple of other games that have gotten overlooked. Darius, Adventure Island, Dizzy, Athena, Castlevania, Milon's Secret Castle and Bubble Bobble. Bub and Bob are able to rent a car now guys! That's madness!

What's not madness is that Texas' Film Board is raising the reimbursement program for game companies in the state. The level is jumping from 5% to 15% and is now at the same level that film is in the state. This will produce an additional 300 jobs from EA Sports in Austin and that's just the start. This is good for the industry.

I disagree with a lot of business practices this state does, but supporting arts and entertainment industries can never be a bad thing. Good job Texas.

I really don't know how to end this insane rambling, so in the spirit of a government institution recognizing that gaming is on par with film...

Fin.