Song of Freedom Fighters

Unfortunately, Radiata Stories was a one-off; the universe had potential (I could see that, even though I only played a few hours into the game).

The game follows the journey of Jack Russell, and his quest to become a knight like his father. Depending on the choice made at a certain point in the game, the story branches in one of two directions (each branch has its own set of recruitable characters, and results in a different ending).

The game sports nearly two hundred recruitable characters, though you can’t get them all on the same play through. Jack can also kick everything; this gets items and money (from inanimate objects), and can start battles if you kick an NPC and he doesn’t like it.

Don’t see Dylan Dog. It’s not so bad it’s good, it’s so bad it’s terrible.

I had hoped that Dylan Dog wasn’t as bad as the trailers made it look.

That hope was in vain. Brandon Routh couldn’t act his way out of a wet paper bag, and no one in their New Orleans spoke with any approximation of the correct accent.

When the high point of the movie is the head vampire saying, “The human race is obsolete, y’all,” that doesn’t say much for it.

Dylan Dog was so bad, it didn’t even have trailers; no other movies wanted to be associated with it.

I’m not going to post a trailer; if you want to know more information about it, google it. I’ve already sullied my page enough.

Song of Mana

Legend of Mana, one of the games released as part of Square’s “Summer of Adventure” in 2000 (along with Vagrant Story and Chrono Cross, I believe), continued the Mana series (whose first installment was released on the original Game Boy as Final Fantasy: Adventure).

I never played it; what I did play of the various Mana games led me to believe that I wouldn’t enjoy it. That meant, unfortunately, that I never got to hear the Song of Mana (the game’s ending theme); at least, not until the Square Vocal Collections album was released.

Sure, it’s in Swedish (and yet there’s not a “Bork, bork, hurty-flurty schnipp-schnipp” to be heard!), but that doesn’t mean it’s not awesome. It’s sung by Annika, a one-time member of the group Rednex (best known for Cotton Eye Joe).

Look, I don’t make this stuff up; it’s too ridiculous to be fiction!

Are you now or have you ever been a …

Gun owner?

Josh Sugarmann, VPC head, writes on the HuffPo (I feel dirty) that household and individual gun ownership has hit an all-time low. He even has poll responses to back up his assertions!

Which would be impressive, if the NICS data from the FBI didn’t indicate a trend going the other direction.

Linoge has his own poll going; if someone you didn’t know knocked on your door and asked if you owned any guns, would you tell them the truth?

Is it any of their business?

Regarding the VPC’s point: it doesn’t matter if all guns in the US have been destroyed save one; it doesn’t matter if only one gun owner remains; the right to self-defense still exists, and even if gun owners have become the minority, that doesn’t make infringing on basic rights allowable.

The NRA’s Annual Meeting begins tomorrow in Pittsburgh; I won’t be there. Unfortunately, all of my guns were lost in a tragic boating accident.

As was the boat.

And, for that matter, my secret stash of Kinder Eggs.

Phantasmagoria

The soul still burns! And as long as the games sell as well as Soul Calibur IV did, it will keep on burning for a long time yet.

If fighting games are your thing, this series needs no introduction; even if they’re not, you’ve probably at least button-mashed your way through a few battles in the ten years since Soul Calibur first debuted on the Dreamcast.

The series is the saga of an evil sword (the Soul Edge) and its good counterpart (the Soul Calibur); various characters search for the sword, or fragments of the sword, for all of the typical reasons: revenge, power, greed, amnesia, and to seal it away for the good of the world.

Unlike Street Fighter, Tekken, and Dead or Alive, the characters in the Soul Calibur franchise all use different weapons. Swords, staves, nunchaku, axes, chain whips. It makes for a different style of play than the brawling fighters have, and I enjoy it. Even if the last game or two have really cheapened up the gameplay.

I feel I would be remiss if I didn’t post the latest Keynes versus Hayek rap battle

So here you go (part one is here)!

I’m not a big rap fan, but I still thought these were pretty good.

Assemble

Wartech: Senko no Ronde is what you get when a developer can’t decide if he wants to make a traditional arcade shmup, or a fighting game.

The various characters pilot their respective ships in one-on-one battles against each other (like in a fighting game!). The ships each have their own strengths and weaknesses, and varying bullet patterns; each player also has the option to temporarily transform into “boss mode.”

Yes. Boss mode. Instead of trapping the player in a tiny, insignificant ship, Wartech allows you to finally experience what shmup stage bosses must feel; your ship becomes gigantic, you regen health, and you can flood the screen with a hail of bullets.

Assemble is Mika Mikli’s theme:

Well, that was underwhelming. All that brouhaha, and the birth certificate was legit all along.

President Obama, at long last, has released his birth certificate (thanks, no doubt, to the tireless efforts of pompous blowhard Donald Trump). However, his claims that more news time has been spent on his birth certificate than on actual important issues ring false.

I’m not skeptical of its authenticity (and neither are big names in the GOP); though I do wonder what the point in waiting around this long was.

Several people think that he’s been delaying to paint birthers as paranoid lunatics. That seems plausible; the Gormogons point out that Hillary Clinton invented the whole issue, and Obama probably decided to see if he could use it to take out other political opponents with it as well.

I don’t know if it will backfire or not; he left it alone long enough that the real crazies are convinced he would’ve released it long ago if he hadn’t had anything to hide.

We just have to keep in mind what’s really important, though: Trump was able to hijack the birther issue to boost ratings for his TV show!

Quote of the Indeterminate Time Interval – Caleb

In the comments over at Robb’s (with info on the Top Shot season 4 casting call!):

Top Shot is the first firearms related show that doesn’t rely on hardcore gun nuts to provide its primary viewing audience, and that’s not just a good thing, it’s a GREAT thing. When shooting guns is culturally equivalent to eating bugs on a deserted island, we’re winning so hard it’s a wonder the brady campaign even tries at all. [emphasis added]

I can remember when that would have been a point in the Brady Bunch’s favor, but reality TV has changed much!

He’s right, though; Top Shot is pushing shooting further into the mainstream, and that’s got to give the anti-gunners night terrors. All those people, surrounded by guns, having fun, and no one gets killed!

I watched the first season and haven’t tuned in for the second; the shooting was pretty cool, but the reality TV aspects annoyed me. That’s obviously not the case for most people; and good on the History Channel, I say!

May Top Shot continue to get excellent ratings, and long may the gun banners cry into their cheerios!

For those of you who’ve been under a rock since the PSN went down last week

Your personal and credit card information could be at risk.

The official PlayStation Blog has the whole press release.

It’s because of incidences like this that I’ve not chosen to entrust Xbox Live and the PSN with my own credit card information; when I’ve bought DLC (or downloadable games), I’ve used PSN cards and Xbox Live point cards (if you’d rather buy content from the Japanese stores, NCSX and Play Asia can set you up (since inputting credit card information for each region requires a billing address in said region, cards are the only effective way to purchase out-of-region content)).

Of course, that’s kind of useless right now; with the PSN down, you can’t change your password, or personal info, or delete whatever credit cards you had linked with your account. So in the meantime, just watch your card history, and be prepared to cancel if some Russian guy buys a bunch of stuff.