| WKC |
[04 Feb 2010|04:03am] |
Screw the reviews, this is a pretty fun game. Glad I listened to importer friends rather than the lukewarm media reception. The story is pretty blah/cliche thus far, so if that's your entire world then maybe it isn't for you. But gameplay is downright entertaining once you get the hang of combos, and the online(Geonet) is straight out of the .hack world. Hard to explain why I got that impression (maybe the attached message board/post style?), but I like it, and I haven't even gotten a deed to customize my land yet. First(and only thus far) online quest I did was with a bunch of randoms, all of whom had headsets. The map was huge, the objectives took about 30 minutes followed by a lengthy double-boss fight that ended with 3/4 of us dead and a victory scream when the last remaining player finished it off. Awesome~
Online ID is the same as my PSN. And the same as my livejournal. And the same as almost every character I've made in any game, ever. Add me! (and if you do, especially if you're already on my PSN, let me know to reciprocate! There's no notification and both have to add eachother for them to show online)
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| zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz |
[01 Feb 2010|12:15pm] |
(11:51:31 AM) Bismarck Jin: so bored, bc2?
(11:51:39 AM) Celeras: nah going afk in a few
(11:51:54 AM) Bismarck Jin: =/ i guess i wouldnt wanna play either if i was jus gonna get dominated
(11:52:14 AM) Celeras: wat
(11:52:39 AM) Bismarck Jin: s'ok man i understand
(11:52:48 AM) Celeras: You are making a colossal error in judgment right now.
(11:53:20 AM) Bismarck Jin: w/e, no big deal. you said something about afking to get a tampon?
(11:53:20 AM) Celeras: Whatever you're typing, think long and hard about hitting enter.
(11:53:22 AM) Celeras: Ok
(11:53:25 AM) Celeras: Not only are you about to be schooled
(11:53:37 AM) Celeras: But i'll even fore-go munitions wherever possible and KNIFE you back down to reality
(11:53:38 AM) Bismarck Jin: lol
(11:53:49 AM) Celeras: Get me a dogtag for every day of the week, real talk.
(11:53:55 AM) Bismarck Jin: we'll see, come to my vent
(11:53:59 AM) Celeras: brt
How embarrassing
Nothing worth posting lately, figured I'd throw this out there ;p Vana'Diel fanfest coming late February, FFXIV stuff will be there. Seems like a good place to announce your beta is starting, no? Especially since they said FFXI players will have a leg up if interested? Fingers crossed.
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| Something to post! |
[17 Jan 2010|10:14pm] |
Enjoy the moment, next weekend is gonna be a battle.
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| NDA dropped, Fermi rules the world |
[05 Jan 2010|02:56am] |
Nvidias been taking a lot of heat lately for the delays with their Fermi DX11 GPUs. ATI has had their first gen DX11 cards released for a couple months now, so for the first time in a long while they've had the best performance cards on the market (5870 holds single GPU title, 5970 for dual GPU).
Well, lol, that's fucking over. NDA is down, and it didn't take anything except the strike of midnight for the information flood to begin. Bolds for number emphasis:
All benchmarks done at: 1920x1200, 4xAA 16xAF
GF100 outperforms ATi's 5870 by 46% on average
GF100 outperforms ATi's 5970 by 8% on average(SINGLE gpu vs DUAL gpu!)
The GF100 gets 148 fps in DiRT2
The GF100 gets 73 fps in Crysis2
The GF100 gets 82 fps in AvP3
GF100's maximum load temperature is 55 C.
The release week of GF100 is Mar 02nd
Blackberry ordered about a million Tegra2 units for their 2011 smartphone.
Apple ordered a few million Tegra2 units for the 2011 iPhone.
Nintendo ordered several million Tegra2 units for their next gen handheld (the DS2!)
Extra spoilers!
* GF100 and GF104 will feature a new 32x Anti Aliasing mode for enthusiast setups.
* GF100 and GF104 can do 100% hardware based decoding for 1080p BluRay and H264 playback.
* GF100 and GF104 feature full SLi capability and a new scaling method for rendering!
* GF100 and GF104 will provide full on chip native C++ operation for Windows and Linux environments. This will be further augmented with CUDA and OpenCL.
* GF104 will feature new technology designed for UHD OLED monitors!
* GF100 promises to deliver at least 40% more performance than the GTX295 for less money. GF104 promises double that.
http://www.overclock.net/hardware-news/641156-guru-legit-nvidia-specs-benchmarks.html
If you're like me, you're planning on making some upgrades for FFXIV. Look no further, and start planning accordingly. We'll see more at CES 2010 over the weekend, as if anything else needed to be said.
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| Post Christmas modding |
[27 Dec 2009|10:01am] |
Cats suck, for a million reasons. Reason #5491 on this endless list: Omnipresent Cat Hair. I was somewhat prepared for this when Alice moved in with her 2 cats, and was ready to do all the necessary dances. Avoid the side of the couch the cat always plops down on. Take caution when snuggin' up with the blanket in bed. Shelf every piece of black clothing I own for the duration of their life span. Etc.
Despite all these mental precautions, there was one thing I did not expect #5491 to effect. Probably the most important non-living thing in the apartment, my computer. Opening that side panel a month into the move was a scene out of the worst horror flim imaginable. Holy shit. The intake fans, the heatsink. It was a massacre. A massacre that would not be repeated.
Fast forward to Christmas 09, and why I'm telling this story. Enter: my new tower case, a Coolermaster HAF932. A beaut. The first upgrade towards FFXIV readiness, and a necessity to keep things cool when I inevitably push my CPU OC a tad further. Videocard still requires a change(8800) to DX11, but that's for a later date. Anyway, having learned my lesson from the Felineian massacre, I knew what had to be done. And since quality filters are not made to fit the 230mm size this tower sports on its intake, there was only one solution.
( No, not cross-dressing )
I take no credit for the idea, found it on overclock.net as a stickied guide in the HAF932 owners group. I do, however, take credit for buying a 2-pack when I only ended up needing one. Extra Christmas present for Alice!
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| FFXIV Story |
[23 Dec 2009|09:59am] |
A lot has been coming out of Famitsu lately, mostly being scans of character customization. While thats all well and good (personally, I just assume such customization in modern games), we also got a good deal of meat pertaining to the FFXIV storyline. Nothing to deep, but basic synopsis as well as names were thrown out. It's kind of lengthy, so I dont want to just copy/paste all of it, but here's the beginning:
FFXIV's main story prologue begins 10 years in the past. Powerful gods, known in Japanese as "Banshin," have appeared in Eorzea, summoned by people known as "Banzoku," or "savages," who used the gods' power to strike fear in the people. Meanwhile, to the northeast, the militaristic Garlean Empire has been expanding its reach, using its mechanical technology and overwhelming strength of arms in an attempt to rule the continent.
In Eorzea, now faced with these two threats, adventurers (that's you!) have a mysterious power which lets them experience past events. It is believed that this power can change the world.
Full Source: http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2009/12/23/ffxiv_story/
Seems like time traveling will be a major factor from the get-go.
And because I need a picture, here's my favorite scan to come out of Famitsu. Should be obvious why :D (FFXI crab is obviously shopped in)
WE MEET AGAIN.
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| NEWS |
[16 Dec 2009|05:24pm] |
http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/
FFXIV BETA APPLICATIONS UP. GO FRIENDS GO.
Inner circle: As always, if I'm in you're in.
Outer circle: I wouldn't deprive anyone so long as I trust you, its fking FFXIV!
G'luck to all~
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| Better than nothing |
[13 Dec 2009|02:09pm] |
Nobuooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
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| Quickie |
[06 Dec 2009|07:25pm] |
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The realization that White Knight Chronicles, Heavy Rain, and Final Fantasy XIII are all within a month of eachother has me mildly depressed. Why they do this :/
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| Random news |
[02 Dec 2009|04:29pm] |
Haven't posted in a while(boo XIV silence), so figured I'd throw out some random bullet points of things I've come across just to keep this puppy somewhat active.
-Final Fantasy XIII clocks in at over 50 hours according to Kotaku. Not that you'd have to worry about a short Final Fantasy, but it's good to know that RPGs aren't really being touched by the casual torch plaguing other genres. Can't wait! Just hoping their isn't too much overlap with Heavy Rain, which slotted their release for late February. Both guaranteed to be meaty, so hopefully they can both get their time in the sun.
-Nobuo Uematsu has finished the OST for FFXIV. Not necessarily indicative of how far along development is, but certainly doesn't hurt!
-I originally said the Dragon Age: Origins was no Baldur's Gate, but was still good. I want to up that to: No Baldur's Gate, but pretty darn good. Still not a huge fan of the controls, but it grew on me in the latter stages. And after all, how many games give you the option to talk your resident priestess into a foursome with your entire party?
Exactly. Pretty darn good.
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| Rant time |
[20 Nov 2009|02:37am] |
This has really been getting on my nerves, especially in this packed release quarter where I've been playing a lot of new games.
What the HELL is up with analog inverting? Its a really simple concept to me, especially in third person games. You're controlling a character from a floating camera perspective.. go ahead and picture a floating camera following your character. How would you look at the ground while keeping the character centered? By raising the camera up above, up = look down. How would you get the camera to pan to the right while again keeping the character centered? By panning to the left, left = right.
Visualization!
That's what's natural to me. If its not setup this way by default, ill be running into walls until its changed. But I get the other sides (stupid) argument for the opposite, that's not what this is about. Seriously, can game devs decide which is default and which is inverted? I've only recently noticed that it varys from game to game, each preloaded with whatever the fuck settings it wants and usually with a simple invert toggle in settings. One games invert is another games default and its getting on my nerves.
I never know if I'm setup correctly until that first instinct turn where I run off a fucking cliff. There's got to be a better way :(
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| Bad Company 2 |
[12 Nov 2009|07:08pm] |
If there's one positive thing I could say about Modern Warfare 2, it's that it made me look forward to the new Bad Company even more. I've always been a fan of the Battlefield games, and the new one is looking pretty solid and making actual gameplay innovations in its sequel. Yeah, go figure.
Now if you were around at all this afternoon, I probably dropped you a line at some point to let you know when fileplanet opened up their beta keys to the public. I had been F5ing intermittently for the better part of the day, so I felt obligated to share its popping with anybody who would listen. Unfortunately this beta is for the Ps3(PC comes later), and even though console FPSs aren't really my thing I'm still stoked to give it a try. Was pretty lucky I saw the page go up when it did, especially since it lasted no more then 20 minutes total before going into subscriber-only mode again.
Have a Ps3? Interested, but weren't around this afternoon during the public window? Well, I used Ita's fileplanet account to scoop up a second key just for you. First come first serve, if you want it let me know. The beta opens up on November 19th and will last the better part of the holidays. Code is redeemed on the PSN after that date. Here's a little teaser to wet your whistle, showing off some squad action and environment destruction goodness.
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| Oh |
[11 Nov 2009|01:41am] |
So SE updated their FF13 faq. My Japanese sucks, but it looks like the FFXIV campaign code with the FFXIII purchase is for an in-game item, not the beta. I don't know whether to be happy that I'm back in the running for the first wave, or disappointed that a first wave doesn't exist yet.
[edit]confirmed by a better translator on Eorzeapedia
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| Covert OP |
[09 Nov 2009|09:09pm] |
Operation: PIRATE THE SHIT OUT OF MODERN WARFARE 2, underway.
All for naught since it won't even be played due to the fact that it doesn't have Dedicated Servers(lol, seriously?), but still. Stick to the guns, fight the power.
Fuck Activision.
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| FKIN BOGUS |
[06 Nov 2009|12:31pm] |
WHY YOU DO THIS TO ME. (XIV beta key with Japanese version of FF13)
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| Dragon Age: Origins |
[03 Nov 2009|07:17pm] |
It's no Baldur's Gate, but its not bad. Give it a shot if thats your kind of game.
Nothing new at Micromania, as you may have imagined since you know I would've updated sooner if there was. Beta signup was the newsletter we all already had access to. It's been a while since we heard anything new, hope we get something soon!
That's all. Now if you'll excuse me, Demon's Souls NG+4 is calling. Almost platinum~
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| Convention |
[22 Oct 2009|06:12am] |
Days late on this one, but here it is in case you didn't hear. Next weekend(30th) Square Enix will be at the Micromania convention in France, and XIV will be present.
There wasn't anything new at TGS, but thats probably on account of it being so close to Gamescom where they hit us with playable demos and a boatload of info. Maybe we'll get a bone thrown this weekend? Cross your fingers.
Update that isnt days late: French website breaks news that Micromania participates will be able to sign up for Beta. Perhaps we'll get a date?
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| I am game, hear me roar |
[16 Oct 2009|07:59am] |
Warning: Grainy cellphone pictures incoming, proceed at your own risk.
Finally beat it, and wow that was one hell of a game. Ending was plenty satisfying, if for nothing else but the difficulty of the journey. The story is what it is, nothing too deep and just keeps the action flowing(and flowing it is). Took the good ending to go in line with most of my decisions throughout the first playthrough, planned on saving the darker side for the first NG+ file which I haven't yet started. Kind of scared to do so tbh, as I have a feeling 1-1 of NG+ is going to be prime invasion territory since I'm sitting on like 200,000 souls from the end of the first playthrough... yikes. That'd be one hell of a gank if anybody got me.
So how did it fare the first time around you ask?
Mmm baby, why you so good to me. Surely there can't be much left to explore in the NG+ file with that kind of action in the first go.
Oh my :D Not even halfway through the goodies, with lots of evil story stuff to partake and endless phantom invading? 60 dollars well spent.
Very minor non-story spoilers incoming as I want to gush about something(two bosses), so stop reading here if you want some surprises with boss encounters later on. Some of these bosses, wow. I mean they're all well scripted encounters in their own ways, but some of them are exceptionally unique. Take the end of 5-3 for example. Every boss thus far has been prototypically evil where you don't really need to an explanation for going in and slaughtering them for their souls.. not this one. You have a pretty little Maiden in white along with her bodyguard, who immediately makes you feel like a dick as soon as you enter the level. 'Theres nothing to plunder here, for this is the sanctuary of the doomed. Leave here in peace blah blah.' Paraphrasing what I can remember of course, but really playing up the fact that they've been turned, victims if you will, and just want to be left alone to rot in their little hole here and not hurting anybody. Ok, well.. you have a boss HP bar, so you have to die so I can have your Demon Soul. Now, there's numerous ways to go into this fight vs. the both of them. However, if you kill the pesky bodyguard before touching the maiden (she has the boss hp bar, bodyguard is more of a distraction) she becomes unhostile and you can talk to her. She mourns the bodyguards death, and kills herself. And to top if off, from then on the music in the Nexus is this really gloomy funeral-esque organ music(which I'm told coincides with a certain amount of bosses being killed and not necessarily this fight, quite the coincidence). Ive never felt like more of a dick in a videogame before, lol.
But this next boss really takes the cake. Now, let me run you through a basic gameplay premise for the entire game if you haven't played. If you die you're in soul form. If you're in soul form(50% of your max hp and no footsteps, otherwise same as body form), you can get your body back by either a rare resurrection item or by defeating a boss. You can also chose put down a soul sign and chose to be summoned by another player and help them defeat their level in co-op, and get your body back that way if you succeed(though your own file won't get credit for that level). Ok now fast forward to world 3. You put down a soul sign in this world, BEWARE. Sure, you may get summoned.. but it may not be by the friendly co-op player you're expecting. If someone is in that world and about to proceed to the 3-3 boss(Old Monk), theres a chance he will pick up your sign and summon you. Yes, THE BOSS SUMMONED YOU. You play as the Black Phantom boss AGAINST the player. Talk about a dynamic encounter. If you die, well grats to the player who defeated you as he just beat the last boss of world 3 and you're sent back to your own world empty handed. But if you win and send the poor player to his doom? Oh man.. let's just say the Old Monk shows his appreciation with a very unique looking garment. A crown for the victor, if you will.
It fit his 50-foot body slightly better than my own. Nothing else needs to be said, it will be in my inventory at all times :D
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| Game of the Year |
[08 Oct 2009|09:57pm] |
I cannot even begin to gush about this game, so hopefully that title in a year this packed with goodies will get the point across. It's been such a long time since I've experienced such a genuinely hard/satisfying game. And I'm not talking about Ninja Gaiden(probably the last game I remember thinking was tough) hard, which was pretty difficult in its own right. This is a completely different ballpark. There are no reloads, there are no checkpoints, there are no saves. You die(a lot), and the game pisses on your corpse and then rapes your mother before forcing you back to the beginning of the level. With half the hitpoints you started at. With everything respawned. With every death from body form pushing you towards Black World Tendency, which further BUFFS the HP/Damage of the enemies in the level.
It is hard. Hard enough that it would be an injustice to try to describe it without shoving a controller in your hand and forcing you to play. Which, by the way, you should do. I'm pushing ~9 hours playtime since yesterday, 2% complete. I may go for platinum.
Random google images picture to round out the entry:
This guy made me regret my sword&board decision so much... arghhh
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