Saturday, October 11, 2008

COCKING PISS TROUSERS!

Goddammit! I'm pretty pissed off now. I accidentally lost my camera in the convention and thus lost so many terrific opportunites to take pictures of terrific cosplayers. I am such a goddamn idiot. But, the trip wasn't a complete loss, for 6 reasons.

1. I had a hell of a lot of fun rocking out to Down With the Sickness, Chop Suey and Eye of the Tiger on Rock Band 2. And seriously, can you think of anything funnier than watching Kisame do a stage dive off a chair during one hell of a solo?

2. I had a bit of fun with Wren and Captain Crazy (Whose name escapes me). Pink Power Ranger and Misa-Misa to the rescue!

3. I realized that Super Smash Brothers sucks ass on the Gamecube. So does Bleach: Shattered Blade.


4. See picture below:





FUCK YES! YURI PADDLE FTW!

5. See other picture:


I am officially a member of Anonymous, the bane of teh intarwebs.

And 6. I'm sure many people will remember me as that drunken asshole who was dancing to "Beat It" in the Dealers Room, blocking the walkway for everyone else.

It wasn't a complete drag, but for over 100 dollars counting the metro station and souvinier money, it really wasn't worth it.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

It's cherry poppin' time!

Hey guys. Long time, no post, huh? Well, no crap-tastic movies have been shoveled down my throat now, so I really haven't had any reason to post. I do have good news, though. I will be heading down to Anime USA in Crystal City with a couple of my friends. I'll hopefully have a lot of pictures to bring back, but until then, please help yourself to the pictures of last year.
An ariel view of the Artwork something-or-other.
Me, dressed as Kisame, out in the parking lot. Note the duct-taped headband.

An in-character Jack Sparrow poses for an embarrasingly long time. I really held him up.

A nice leather outfit; can't place the anime.

A cool lolita-fairy outfit. I like the wings and the staff.

I could have sworn I had more pictures of cosplayers, including a few nice Avatar ones. Oh well. I hope to have even more pictures this time around.

Anime USA is this Fri, Sat, and Sun. I'll be heading out on Saturday and staying for most of the day. If any of you are planning to attend, I'd love to meet you guys.

Who am I kidding? No one will show up. :(

Hentai forever,
Kyouger.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Happy days are here again! (Not really.)

Good day everyone. As you may have noticed from my Mummy review, I'm finally back in school. Now, for the most part, everything has been going okay. The first year I got all girls, and most of them are alright. Except for my English teacher. So you know what she did to me the first day of school? Of course you don't. She spoiled the ending of Breaking Dawn for me! Granted, she was lying about it, but you just don't tell someone how a terrific book ends and then lie about it! That really pissed me off, and she has made a powerful enemy.

As a startling contrast to my merely good looking or old as dirt educators, my Math teacher is smoking hot. I am not kidding, people. She looks a lot like a crush I had last year, just taller and with a better ass. This kind of thing don't happen often. Nice breasts, red hair, freckles, a great smile and a genuine laugh all made me look twice when I first saw her. And the clincher? Married. Not surprised in the slightest. She also might be a couple months pregnant, but it could be my inagination.

But anyway. So far, only thing major update about any updates to come is I got a job working the school library, so I can come in whenever I want. They got this idiotic daily system where grades are only allowed to go on a certain days, but with this, I should be able to get past that little rule.

I started a new chapter for Ask the Cast, hopefully explaining my absense, so if I do post it in the next few days, please read it so I don't have to explain myself further.

I don't have much more to say on this matter, so I'll leave it at that.

Hentai forever,
Kyouger.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Review of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Yes, I do aplogize for not posting in quite a while. Nothing has really been happening as of late, except for the fact that I go back to school next week. Actually, I suppose that is pretty big, since I'll have access to the two things that fuel my writing: boredom and computers. It will eventually depend on the teachers on how much I update, though. It's always a lottery when it comes to getting new teachers. You can either get a real grouch, or you could get an awesome one like Mr. Evans. That dude was awesome.

But anyway, onto the review. I will be explaining the movie all the way through, because I really don't think any of you really care that much about the movie to get on my case. It starts out with an opening exposition about how China's emperor got a bit power hungry and decided to take over. He is cursed by an old woman and becomes a clay statue, along with the rest of his soldiers. Jump forward to 1945, and Brendan Fraser is having a strained marriage with some divy bitch who to the best of my knowledge wasn't in any of the previous movies. I didn't really care, but my dad seemed to, so I suppose it's a big deal to Mummy fans.

Anyway, turns out that Brendan's son has dug up another mummy, only this one isn't alive just yet. It needs the jewel of deus-ex-machina to be revived. Of course, the old guy turns out to be a spy and they accidentally end up reviving him.

Alright, moment number 1 that makes no sense. Apparently, this ninja chick (who is the daughter of the woman who killed the emperor the first time) has this magic dagger which is the only thing that can kill the emperor. When his casket is open, the ninja chick jumps in and stabs a skeleton, which turns out to be a decoy. If he could be killed while he was still in stone, why didn't you kill him beforehand instead of waiting this long? I mean, you had to have known where the tomb was. And don't worry, there will be many more moments that make no sense to come.

After that, they have a car/horse and buggy chase through the streets of chinatown. Now, here I went to get some popcorn, so I missed a bit, but when I got back, the gang are all in the Himalayans for some odd reason. Oh wait, the emperor has to put the stone in a fixture to shine a light telling him where to go.

Along the way, my IQ dropped about 30 points after listening to Brendan's son attempt to act. This guy is one of the worst actors I've ever seen. He tries to put the moves on ninja girl, and comes up with some of the worst lines ever.

"No, the reason you don't like me is because you don't like a woman who can knock you on your back!"
"Hey, the expression is kick my ass!"

Dear god, someone put me out of my misery.

So Brendan and the gang set up a defense perimeter around the stone tablet thing. There is some witty banter between Brendan and his son about which gun is better, the Thompson or the German M-40. This was funny because I often get into gun arguments online on call of duty 4.

So the emperor and newly appointed general (he was the guy who revived him) launch a full-scale assault on the shrine where the tablet is. And that means it's time for the 2nd moment that makes no sense. So far, the emperor has shown control over fire, water and air. He seems fairly indestructible. Bullets only penetrate his clay shell, which covers up his molten insides. So why didn't he just attack in the first place? Instead, he wastes about 20 soldiers only to step in at the last second and totally bitch-slap them all to hell.

Before he does however, Ninja Girl summons three yeti (I know, just go with it) to assist them. These things actually look pretty cool. Like werepyres, only with shorter snouts and no wings. So after the emperor FINALLY steps in and decides to take charge, showing the way to Shangri-La. He also stabs Brendan, who was protecting his son who set off an avalanch with dynamite. Yeah, nice idea there, braniac. This triggers an avalanch, prompting the emperor to do a corny Star Wars ripoff before letting it fall.

Brendan is in mortal peril, so the yeti take him down to Shangri-La, where the woman who killed the emperor is waiting, and heals him. Soon enough, the emperor busts in and steps in the water, emerging as a 3 headed dragon.

We're already up to the 3rd moment that makes no sense. Why would the emperor transform into a western style fire breathing dragon? Wouldn't an eastern dragon have been more apropriate? Lemme provide a couple pictures for compairison.

Chinese:


























Western:



So why would he go as a Western instead of a Chinese dragon? Fuck it, I don't care. Let's move on.
So the emperor kidnaps Ninja Girl for no adequately explained reason (I guess he wanted the dagger, but wouldn't it be easier to just take the dagger instead of taking the girl?) and returns to raise his army.
Brendan and the gang travel to the desert just in time to watch Jet Li at work. His son does the stupidest thing posibly and breaks into the camp to rescue Ninja Girl, leaving the old woman to raise the army of the dead from under the Great Wall.
It's time for moment number 4! I don't even think there is a desert anywhere near the Great Wall, yet the entire climactic takes place there. And what's more, shouldn't the emperor's army be inside the wall? Continuity errors are all over the place here.
Isn't it odd how one thing strings into another? It's already time for no-sense moment number 5! Everyone is constantly saying that the emperor's army must not be allowed to succeed or all will be lost. But seriously, this makes no sense! The emperor's army is made out of clay, and a single pistol shot will take one down! Plus, it only numbers about 2,000 to 10,000, depending on which shot you're looking at. That would be incredibly easy for even the smallest millitary in the world to defeat, much less China.
So the climactic battle is on, as the dead are fighting the dead! And here's where the idiocy really starts ramping up. Moment number 6 is huge. The emperor is supposed to have control over all elements, yet he only fights with a sword. He even gets into a battle with the old woman and fights her sword to sword. He has control over metal, for christ's sake! He could have turned it around and shoved it into her heart! Plus, he never seems to really help his troops all that much.
Right about now, I'm drooling on the floor from the mass amounts of stupid being shoved down my throat, so I don't remember much. But I certainally remember one of the stupidest moments of all, moment number 7!
Alright, so backup in the battle comes in the form of a B-17 or similar. The gunner (Who is Brendan's brother from the first two movies, but I couldn't give a shit right now) drops a bomb that lands on a Jeep being driven by the general. But later, he attacks Ninja Girl and Brendan's wife. What the fuck!? The Jeep clearly explodes into a flaming ball of nothingness, but yet the general manages to escape with only minor facial burns! Oh my god, I'm getting retarted just thinking about it.
Lemme wrap this up before I forget how to type. Brendan kills Jet Li and saves that day. Woo-ho. As a quick side note, why did Jet Li get top billing, anyway? He's only in the movie for like, 20 minutes. The rest of the time, he's in his clay/molten rock form. And the movie gets in one final joke as Brendan's brother says that he'll be going to Peru, along with the caption: "Soon after, many mummies were found in Peru." The only part of this movie that was actually brilliant was the ending line. Hoo-rah.
To sum it up, TOTDE is the worst of the mummy films. It's at least on par with Journey, which I have to imagine Brendan was filming at the same time to not know what kind of crap he was working with. I would never spend 40 bucks on this monstrosity, EVER!
It gets a 6 out of 10. An unforgettable experience, at least if you count mental scarring unforgettable.

Saturday, August 2, 2008

Review of The Dark Knight (Finally...)

Yep, I finally managed to beat, stab and maul my way into the theater to catch The Dark Knight at around 3:00. First things first; I didn't see it IMAX. Our theater is not equipped to run 3d simulations, and personally, I don't think it would make much of a difference. 3d will not make a shit movie better, or a terrific movie even more terrific. With that said, let's get onto the review.

The movie starts out... you know what? I can't seem to remember how the movie started. Well, I know there was a bank heist my some men in clown masks, but after that I just lost track of whatever was happening. The first 15 or 30 minutes are pretty damn boring. After the Joker comes in though, things get a move on a little quicker.

The J man intimidates a bunch of criminals into financing him to kill the Batman. Later he makes a video telling the city that he will kill a bunch of people unless the Batman takes off his mask and turns himself in. And that's how the movie continues.

I'm not going to try to deny that Heath Ledger's death played a big part in promoting this movie. Not that the viral-marketing at last year's Comic-Con didn't do anything, either. But this movie was hyped on beyond belief. Way too much, if you ask me. Iron Man was announced, a trailer was shown and people got excited. That was it. Dark Knight led people all around San Deigo to find the date of release and a picture of the Joker. So I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this didn't fill a lot of people's expectations, simply because their expectations were too fucking high!

Anyway, on to individual segments of the movie. The acting by Christian Bale was very good, but I really didn't like his constant growling at criminals and stuff like that. If he's trying to disguise his voice, that's fair enough, I suppose. It still got on my nerves though. Most of the rest of the characters were solid actors, but the actor who really stole the show was Heath Ledger, and I got to say that he really did a fantastic job as the Joker. I don't think many people could have pulled off this psychopath easily. The makeup was especially good; I don't know who came up for the more grungy looking Joker, but whoever he is, he's a frigging genius. He seriously creeped me out, and I just might go as him for Halloween this year. Two-Face/Harvey Dent was also freaky, seeing as he had the entire left side of his face practically burnt off. Though it would have been a bit better to give him a split personality, like in the comics.

The actions scenes were very good and varied. Maybe it's because I was sitting right in front of the screen (unlike I normally do), but the editing seemed too fast-paced for me to follow very well. Still, every explosion in the book is in here, and weather you like your action on a train, on a plane, or in a high-speed car chase, it's all in here.

The plot is one of the only parts where this movie slumps a bit. It goes a little something like this: Joker threatens city, Batman tries to stop him, fails, Joker blows something up, and a new plotline opens. Repeat as necessary. The new plotlines are usually varied and unique, but it does slow down the movie a bit in between action sequences and long bouts of dialogue.

Another complaint I have is that the Joker just seems invincible. He intimidates the mob, stabs a guy through the eye with a pencil (Eraser side, by the way), escapes from the prison way too easy and takes enough cracks to the head to knock Rocky on his ass. The focus on the movie is how he manages to intimidate a city to the point of anarchy in the streets while wearing clown makeup. He also changes Harvey Dent's mind a bit too quickly.

But overall, for all of my incredibly small nitpicks and gripes, this was a terrific movie. Hell, you don't even need to know who Batman is to enjoy this movie. Great acting, action scenes, and one certified badass as the main villian make this a must-see.

I give it a 10 out of 10. It's going to be nigh on impossible for them to top this one with a sequel.

Hentai and comics forever,
Kyouger.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

A double review! SC4 and NG2

I've decided to do something a little different and review two games in the same post to save time. The titles of those games are Soul Caliber 4 and Ninja Gaiden 2. Let's run down the things they have in common. They're both Japanese, have women in skanky outfits, use swords, and it is the main character's job to fight through as many of his fellow man or ninja as possible. But there the similarities end.

I'll keep the review for Soul Caliber short, since it can be summed up fairly quickly. It's a fighting game. Yeah, I know that; I knew that before I picked it up. There are numerous problems that keep it from being a good fighting game, like Mortal Kombat: Shoulin Monks. First off, you've got about fifteen different characters to start off with, each having a unique storyline that are exactly the same! You go through nearly the same enemies every time, all culminating in a boss which has twice as much health as you which you can still kick the shit out of if you hold the block button.

If each of these characters had their own storyline, I might hate this game less, but they don't. It's the same rooms over and over again, just with different characters. I mean, this could be forgiven if it wasn't only five rooms long. In MK:SM you only played as Lu Kang, but it was an open area with tons of different enemies to defeat. Soul Caliber could have done something like this, but decided to go the cheap way and put a couple random characters in front of you, add a boss that you could beat in ten minutes and pretend to call it a "story."

The gameplay is really where this game fails. Usually the purpose of a fighting game is supposed to be fast-paced action coupled with easy to understand controls. SC's controls are easy enough to understand, but the fact that the game boils down to a button masher detracts from the easiness of use. Plus, the game has about four combos for each character, each of which can be repeated over and over until you win a fight. This is not fun, people! I know that this is kind of what Soul Caliber is supposed to be like, but if a bit more work had gone into the story mode and refining the gameplay, this shitty game could have been turned out alright. As it stands, I doubt it's going to stay in our house for more than a couple months.

I give it a 4/10. Fighting game, yes. Good controls, storyline or gameplay. Definite NO.

Now, shifting gears to a game that is what Soul Caliber should have been but wasn't, Ninja Gaiden 2 is better in almost every way I can think of. The "story" (And I am putting air quotes around this for a reason) of the game revolves around the four Greater Fiends' ressurection and their quest to destroy mankind. This may sound interesting in fanfiction terms, but in a day and age that worships the story and is willing to look past a game's faults if it's well written, this falls flat of standards set by today's market. But relax, it's not all that important. The story does what it's supposed to in a Gaiden game, and that's drive the gamplay. Ryu's travels will take him to all kinds of places, from a gigantic airship (Which he BLOWS UP, by the way. Damn, Ryu is awesome) to the GATES OF HELL themselves.

The combos are fairly tough to pull off, but if you can practice with them enough, you'll be Izuna dropping those spider ninja in no time! Damn, I feel like such a nerd... Anyway, the game is fairly difficult, and the bosses are once again simply ridiculous. Especially the boss of the fourth level, Alexi. His moves are so fucking cheap that you can't even avoid most of them. He'll grab you, strike you with lightning and throw you down on the ground before you have a chance to heal. Plus, there's no way to go back and not use all your healing items because there's a boss coming up. But still, other than the bosses, the game can be mastered if you don't mind getting a few limbs bitten off along the way.

Speaking of severed limbs, there will be quite a lot of those body parts flying around in this game. Frankly, it makes it hard to tell if an enemy is dead or not. Some ninja will get their heads cut off with one strike, some will die if you chop off a leg, yet some will still not die if you chop of both of their arms and one leg. It gets very frustrating sometimes; I'll be doing combos on someone who's already dead (And the combo count will not stop, by the way) while another one crawling on the ground stabs me and blows up, taking about a quarter of my life with him.

Another thing that pisses on my chips is the camera. Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with having a fixed camera, so long as the flood of monsters is controlled so you can see it wherever you are. But it seems that the camera was an afterthought in this game. Way too often am I backed up against a wall, blindly slashing at air because I can't see more than three feet in front of me. Plus, there is this boss battle at the end featuring two lava armadillos (I know, just go with it). The camera kept rapidly switching between the both of them like it couldn't figure out which it wanted to focus on, meaning that I died quite a lot through no fault of my own.

As one final complaint, the platforming sections of the game are quite oddly placed. You can fight through about thirty minutes of enemies and then get to a very oddly placed puzzle that really doesn't seem like it moves the game forward at all. The sections with overwhelming enemy fighting and platforming are separated by an almost audiable clunk. It doesn't mesh them together near as well as it could.

You may think that because of my bitching, I hate this game. It couldn't be further from the truth. I am doing what we in the buisiness call nitpicking. Trust me, I'm not some spectecale wearing model railroad enthusiast who can not function without absolute realism. Leaping eight times your own height, doing a five trillion hit combo on somebody when you cleanly sliced them in half in the cutscene and walking on lava are all fine, so long as it's in the name of good fun. I'll even accept that getting a six foot katana rammed through your torso (Again and again and again) is completely survivable, if a bit homoerotic. All these things are fine, so long as the game plays well. And I'm happy to say that it surpasses Soul Caliber and Devil May Cry 4 in every way I can think of at the moment.

I'll give it a 9/10 for unbelievable orgasmic awesomeness, coupled by a lousy camera and stupid puzzles.

Both of these games appeal to a niche audience, but Ninja Gaiden fills its niche so much better. It's good old hacky-slashy-maimy fun, whereas Soul Caliber is a slogfest that you just want to know when it will end.

My Zombie Plan: New to DA

I’ve said it before I don’t know how many times. The dead are going to rise, weather we want them to or not. So it’s essential to have a plan, even a flimsy one, in place before they do. Organize before they rise. Here's the link to my zombie plan on DA. I won't be submitting this to fanfiction, since I don't know where to put it under.

http://kyouger.deviantart.com/art/My-Zombie-Plan-93173957