Gundam 00 ep. 4 - Clear Your Airspace for This One...

Some quick thoughts about the latest in the only constant running post I can think of doing. First up, they introduced some new characters. Soma Peers here is my favorite, she's totally a cold hearted killing machine from some Uber Mensche (they really do use that term) facility. She's definitely dead by episode 35 I'd assume, hopefully they get her into something that can compete with Setsuna (inevitably she will be fighting it out with him). They also introduce some Princess of a random Middle Eastern style country. Seems like Relena Peacecraft again...only a lot wussier and not as ugly.

There are moments when the art drops and some moments when it's comparable to the first 2 episodes. I guess we're finally hitting that lull where the secondary art teams concentrate on the characters while all the "cool" MS action takes all the budget. It happens to the best of series but it's surprising that there haven't been many majorly flawed scenes yet. Kudos to HD anime.
Custom Flag...how I want you on my shelf. Why does this show continue to show just how cool Graham is? Do they want us to like the "bad guys" that much? It seems counter intuitive to market the show to teen boys yet the most awesome character is the one most likely to die horribly as the series progresses. In the future I hope they don't just paint this as purely a black and white conflict but I'm pretty sure they will. Anyway, so Bandai...how's about an HG 1/100 Union Flag Graham Acre Custom? ^________________^

If Only Scott Baio was There...

Star Trek is way too optimistic

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/pages/100907_11.html

Scientific exploration of outer space has in recent times ramped up. From the early days of just going to the moon to this amazing image taken in February of this year as New Horizon's Kupier Belt unmanned space craft flew by, we are finally seeing the fruits of labor from the astronomical community. The amazing thing about this image is for the first time we are seeing Jupiter in real color. The great Red Spot there however is no longer so great and red, could it be that after 300 years of nonstop storm and activity...much like the Great Dark Spot on Neptune, this monster of a "hurricane" (if we can even call it that) is finally...finally dissipating?

Using a gravitation sling shot effect of passing around the gravitational field of various planets, New Horizons has succeeded in becoming the fastest object we have ever shot into outerspace (much less created on our own planet). It's mission is to explore Pluto and the now discovered Kupier Belt objects, a series of hundreds/thousands?/millions? of planetary objects similar in size to Pluto itself. The mystery of the tenth planet in the solar system is now at a consensus, there is none. In fact we only have 8 planets and including Pluto a ton of smaller dwarf planets encircling our solar system. As we know it now anyway, by 2015, who knows what we'll spot out there?

So what are some of the new findings of the cosmos? Well for starters we are apparently almost entirely sure that the center of the Milky Way is a Super Massive Black Hole and that most every galaxy out there is governed by one.

Also in 3 million or so years the Andromeda Galaxy will be smacking into ours, if humans are still around and lucky this solar system will survive...and at worse case be sucked into the Black Hole of the Andromeda Galaxy.

Dark matter does indeed exist as Einstein predicted (though even he though it was too stupid to imagine).

Quasars are NOT star formations or any of the many theories that came before it, they are in fact Super Massive Black Holes that are "gluttonous". They're absorbing so much material and ejecting so much plasma that they seemed to be something else entirely.

There are now planets and dwarf planets in our solar system. Thanks to the new classification system of what a planet is we are down to 8 planets with Neptune being the furthest out and Pluto and Eris classified as the first 2 trans-Neptunian dwarfs while Ceres in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is also a dwarf planet.

So where are the little green men? Well, it's a tough one to answer but it seems we may never know. Light travels at a set speed and most telescopes are receiving light that is millions to billions of years old. Even if there are civilizations out there on alien worlds (and the probabilities suggest that there in fact are despite the rare earth theory) they may not be able to spot us as we are unable to see them. Covering the distance in light years is also daunting and perhaps a cosmic irony that we may never overcome. The idea that blackholes would be worm holes to other places is also out of the equation, a black hole is so incredibly dense it's literally the point of no return. You cannot escape one once you get too close. Of course if there ever is a search for life from our civilization, we'd better hurry...the longer we wait the further off everything else in the universe becomes.

Bonds on the Battlefield? How about Explodey Things?

Kidou Senshi Gundam : Senjou no Kizuna (Mobile Suit Gundam : Bonds of the Battlefield) is an arcade game that's a major hit with the Japanese. Based on the One Year War era of slow plodding nuclear fueled giants of destruction, Senjou (for short) has you pilotting your choice of Zeon or Feddie mobile suits from within a pod designed to emulate the cockpit of an MS. Pretty impressive as it's an experience that can't be emulated on a home system without a $200 controller like Steel Battalion.



What's even crazier about this game is that it's networked, the more pods your arcade has the more players can join. An 8 player vs. battle between teams of 4 isn't a rarity to be seen as the Gundam license itself is pretty big in Japan. My constant ramblings on this blog about Gundam should probably give you a clue as to how much (and how improbable) I want to play this thing. The controls seem to be based on the good old fashion dual stick tri-window setup. It even has that old classic White Base attack theme song all the old school viewers seem to love.

Is this only the first step? A glimpse into the future? After all, how many more years will it be before they adapt this into an army vehicle of some sort? Preprogrammed human-like motions coupled with the proper mechanical technology with a sufficient power source? It seems the Japanese already have the control scheme down...

Even crazier is what you do when you're not playing. They have a bench area where players sit and wait in a line and off to the side is a view screen for players to watch the other would-be pilots show their skill. Below the screen is a stats window I believe probably detailing the overall combat situation ladder style.



This guy Joshua Zimmerman explains it all very well. Youtube can at least give us a glimpse at what you'd like and the Japanese NEVER give you.

Gundam 00 ep. 3 - Now with Visual Aides!

Last time on Gundam Win~er...Gundam 00, we left Setsuna in a precarious state. Having finished his first sortie as a terrorist for Celestial Being, it hit a little close to home for our non-emo emo. Suddenly from a Union carrier comes the Union Flag piloted by MSWAD ace Graham Acre, ready to "put the moves" on Exia. So how was this episode?
The most interesting thing about this episode is that it exposes the weaknesses of our "heroes". Setsuna is obviously not a very stable person and his piloting skills to this point may be more attributed to his excellent technological advantage than his potential (of which he's bound to have something up his sleeve a la Newtype). Graham is my favorite of all the characters, he fights Exia with a skill level that previous cannon fodder hasn't shown in the series. I hope his reign as the new "Gundam-rival" isn't a miserable one.
We actually get to see the faux-Wing boys in civilian moments this episode followed by a revelation about their aforementioned inherent weakness as a unit. Still, it seems Celestial Being is determined to succeed with their asinine "war to end all wars" plot. It's kind of telling that this mentality hasn't given the fandom on various boards a reason to cheer for Setsuna and crew, in fact like me a lot of people seem to be rooting for Graham to find his "golden ticket" and hopefully defeating at least one of the plot protected yaoi-crew.
Plot protection not withstanding, Exia runs into trouble again as an obviously more well trained pilot exposes more of Setsuna's weaknesses as a pilot. Though both battles in this episode he surprises the enemy using the oft used beam saber, it's refreshing to see that the Gundam Meisters (ugh...I HATE typing that...) are not as invincible as you think. Setsuna himself seems to have an issue with people touching him which might indicate a real link with his Kurdish child soldier background (read a tiny bit about that irl, it's not pretty).
Next episode should be the debut of one silver haired gal whom we've all observed in the intro. My guess is she's the new Lalah Sun / Four Murasame / Stellar Louisier (ie. she's dead meat before ep. 35). However given that this is an all new director without ties to the original series...he might avoid that. Maybe...

Making War Fun for all Ages!

Seriously speaking, Call of Duty 4's demo hit PCs a few weeks earlier and it is an impressive wartime simulation if not an entirely realistic one. But here's the thing, I had thought that this was going to be slightly futuristic and thus a crock of bullocks when it came to weaponry. Lo-and-behold my military knowledge may be quite lacking but I looked it up and that is an M4. So the machine guns are real enough but what about the rest of the game?

Laser wars in night vision. This is just crazy, kinda makes one wonder what the Paris Hilton video might have been like if she were poor...in the middle east...during a terrorist sting operation. Still it's a cool visual to see all the laser pointers moving around. I freaked once or twice thinking the enemies had the same pointers so I thought I was being targeted. It is a nice way of allies being able to pick out exactly what direction you and your buds are aiming in.

There's one part of the demo that has you pick up what's called the "Javelin" which was a lock-on laser guided missile for mobile weaponry like tanks and helicopters. I didn't think that was real either after seeing it's ridiculous firing arc (the thing shoots straight into the sky and then turns dramatically crashing into the target from above). Then I saw this on youtube.com promptly demonstrating how much of an army n00b I be. Good times!

Brenden S. Kennedy!?

This is Totally Unreal

Unreal Tournament, one of the uber-shooter franchises for the PC once again rears it's not so ugly head. As one website described it, Unreal seems to be full of Gears of War rejects and graphically depending on your system the game itself can surpass even Gears' graphical splendor. Though that's according to Epic themselves and being that this is an FPS I would imagine that the graphics will indeed be impressive. As you can see from my very ugly screenshot (I can only take 1 at a time and believe me when I say it is HARD to get a good shot in this game while it's playing live. My best screen shot is one I took as I lost...that's rather telling) that even my system can push out a pretty impressive piece.

I do notice however that this may once again be one of those games where having HDR lighting means sacrificing anti-aliasing. It's not a big deal for those people with awesome setups who can bump up the resolution but for those of us who can only run games at a meager 1280 x 720 (ok...that is pretty high, but still...) I wonder if HDR is even worth it then? Though a few jaggies on a hi-res widescreen monitor is better than nothing. It's apparent though I need more RAM as 1 gig isn't sufficient to hold the frame rate at a stable pace. I can imagine that the PS3 version is being capped at 16 players online for that very reason. I did see a server claiming to be able to hold 256 players...though that's obviously NOT a good idea.

Unreal Tournament 3 returns us to the same exact game as previous renditions. What that means is it's the ultimate test of twitch shooting madness. Characters in UT run so fast at times it's hard to aim and snipers really are tested on their skills at that point. Imagine trying to play the game while finding time to hit the screen caps only to realize that you've got about .5 seconds to touch that button or you're minced meat. Hopping around and firing rockets or whatever you may have is once again the best option as the speed of the game is break-neck and forces players to almost spaz out in firing their weapons, sometimes with much luck you can get a kill or two off before you're eventually blown away by that one guy who has a Core 2 Quad + 8800GTSSUPERAWESOMEEDITION. The weapons return all unchanged except for the aesthetics but one thing I have to congratulate Epic on is the vehicles. That screenshot up there? That's something you can drive and as you can see from my perspective that was not a great place to be at all.

Over-all it's more of the same in the same way Halo 3 is more of the same but at the very least they decided that Gears of War looks so good that they should make UT3 look similarly impressive. For me, it's vomit inducing and I couldn't play it for more than 5 minutes. I'm sticking to Team Fortress 2.

Gundam 00 - Ep. 2 : Gundam Meisters

So episode two of the new Gundam series has been released and after watching it, I'm still rather unconvinced yet wondering curiously where this is going. In this episode we find out much more about the world situation which is ever important to any Gundam series. Understanding the political climate and the divisions in the world can outline the road map of the entire series. Here it seems in the near future as fossil fuels burned up on the planet, a gigantic orbital ring was formed in "less than a lifetime" to house the multiple millions of solar collectors to serve as fuel for the entire world. Because of this three super elevators to this orbital ring are created by the nations of the world who have banded together in three separate groups that constantly wage war on each other to protect their share of the energy supply.

It seems the technology level of this show is very much low tech, with the average mobile weapon moving like the slow plodding mechs from Mechwarrior. The Gundam have the advantage of plot-protection as they happen to have the most advanced technology in the GN reactor as they clearly move 200% faster and maneuver 100 times better in the sky than anything the regular armies can come up with. I do like that they don't seem quite that invincible as they do regularly take hits even from the tank like machines and require much backup from one another to succeed in their missions. Of course the bootlegged Zaku-tank looking mechs clearly show exactly why bi-pedal mobile weapons of this sort cannot function in a realistic war scenario in today's age.

I'm still confused though as they are hinting that Celestial Being is not just trying to stop all the wars by using their might. They seem to have a hidden agenda that they're clearly aware of and fully volunteering for. Another point is by the end of the episode they appear to be goading the nations of the world into a large conflict on purpose? It seems they are simply trying to create a greater terror to unite the world's nations as a common enemy can have that sort of affect on the world. This is not too much different than the end of Gundam Wing with the "war to end all wars" scenario. Now I have a SERIOUS problem with this idea...

World War II. At the end of WWII the world spun into a new nuclear age. The camaraderie between nations fell apart almost immediately because of the fear of this new weapon the United States had created. Ideologies ran rampant and the world was divided in two. No sooner had the world united to defeat the evils of the Nazis and their partners, the world crumbled into a mess of smaller conflicts due to paranoia. In short...they are still very much pursuing a very idealistic end to this series. Idealism itself is grand yet to suspend belief too much for the sake of story telling sometimes lead to a very unsatisfying conclusion. A lot of people call it being pessimistic however it's for this reason that many began watching Gundam in the first place.

End quote.

20,000 Leagues under the Monster Hunter

Wii's got a Golden Ticket!!!

Capcom has fulfilled prophecy, the one that states "our annoucement this fall will make your heads explode!! for today it is Official......Monster Hunter 3 will be on the Wii.

My first impression was....HOLY SHIT!!!what about PS3, so I went to the official PS japan site only to discover that they had taken down everything that had to do with
MH3, could this mean wii exclusive!!!..only time will tell.

Naturally, upon discovering this, I got a bit upset....for about 10sec before I realised, JESUS!! this is going to be awesome!!!. The more you think about it, the more you begin to realise how much better the experience will be!!! Think about it!
Sword and Shield, Bow and Arrow, Shield and Lance, you get the Idea, it's completely revolutionary!!,it's what MH should be evolving to.
I remember a time when I used to play "Bust a Move(Groove) for ps1 and I thought to myself "this would be so much more awesome if it ahd a mat" and WAH LA! DDR began to rule not just the dance gaming industry but the entire Arcade industry as well. I thought same thing about Guitaroo man, awesome game but if it had a Gee-tar that would be magically fantastical!! Along came Guitar Hero and you know the rest.
Now it seems its Monster Hunter's turn to evolve, not graphic wise(god I wish) but experience wise( much better than having better graphics), and if you ask me, I think we're looking a the beginning of a beauful new experience.

I'm in no way a fanboy of Wii or Nintento, as a matter of fact if I ever see Yoshi or Bowser in MH3 Im gonna Tomahawk throw my Wiimote at Iwata and nunchuck capcom in the face for letting the shit happen, but I'm sure it won't come to that...right capcom? =)

Anyways, I'n the end I think having MH on Wii is the right move. Wii is fun, cheap and motivated by innovation. I love my PS3, it's a powerhouse, but its just flat out expensive and soon to be gimped. 360, another powerhouse and my favorite system at the moment had the least likely chance at scoring MH simply because japan hates the conglomerate devil that is Microsoft, the evil organization hell bent on ruling the world.

So guys I guess it's time to get off our lazy asses and pretend like we're slaying real fucking dragons here!!! I wonder how they'll make the fuckin horn work?? =P.

Gundam 00, kidou!!

So Gundam 00 finally hits the airwaves in it's home country where bi-pedal automatons are the popular form of entertainment. After the magic of the internet and fanaticism allowed me to view the first episode, I can now finally make a good judgment on how much I may enjoy or not enjoy the series. I'll begin by outlining the pros of this show so far :

Pro : The intro song is by L'arc En Ciel. The animation is being done in HD video. Gundam.

Cons :
Ok I really have to wonder why it is that they decided to copy the story from Shin Kidousenki Gundam Wing. They came to the conclusion in that series that using war to stop all wars is a ridiculous notion. Here we are in 2007 with another show where the first episode has 4 mysterious uber-Gundam mechs flying around destroying all sorts of mech-baddies with their oh so invincible turbo engines of winged doom and...well...we've all seen this before. It's not that much fun after the 22nd time. The show even pokes fun at how hypocritical the situation is with the group Celestial Being who are using their big guns to stop all arguing amongst the nations in the world. Unless the show is consciously trying to go somewhere with the idea of "Hypocritial Being" then I honestly don't think this could be all that good.

It's also become way too blatantly obvious that they're using the formula that worked for Wing to try and capture the 13 year old teens segment. But how are they achieving that? With more pretty girlie boys and ugly girls? How is a 13 year old boy preoccupied with the growing world of internet porn going to like watching a show with the most metro sexual cast since Code Geass? Setsuna seems destined to be another Heero Yuy clone with the same exact backstory and perhaps future growth as Sousuke from Full Metal Panic. His Gundam Meister (oh jeez...) mates all seemed predestined for lots of BAD bad yaoi fiction and the mech design has no sense of uniformity, preferring to mash a bunch of different cut and paste MS' into the show.
They should have just animated Unicorn...