Light Novels redux

Having being kept away from home yet having decent amounts of free time this week, I've been chipping away at more ranobe.

In the past three days I've finished Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii
Wake ga Nai #2 and started on and finished the first volumes of
Nekuroma and Ranobe-bu.

I don't care much for Hirasaka Yomi's somewhat excessive use of odd
text formatting (bolded text and giant font sizes), which comes off as
feeling kind of cheap, but nevertheless enjoyed both of his books
thoroughly.

Ranobe-bu is pretty similar to Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai in terms
of both themes and format. It's Boku wa (ry that got me to get more
stuff by the author in the first place, so it was probably a matter of
course that I liked Ranobe-bu.

Nekuroma at first glance seemed nothing like the other two, but Hirasaka's writing doesn't change much regardless of the setting, noticeable by the (some might say excessively)
strongly defined (some might say eccentric) characters and the fast tempo of the story. Tempo, not pace; The story in the first volume of Nekuroma is little more than an introduction, and the other two series barely even have real plots.

All of that may sound pretty negative but it's really not; The former makes for truly interesting (in a makes you guffaw kind of way) conversations, while the latter allows for continuous, enjoyable reading.

Anyway, I've already placed an order for the rest of Nekuroma and the
next volume of Ranobe-bu (Amazon is sold out of #3).

Ah well, time to start on Ore no Imouto ga (ry #3.

Oh, and happy new year.

Addition, 3rd January 2010: Also finished Oreimo #3 as well as Miimaa #2 and I'm pretty much out of stuff to read out here. Bah.

Idolmaster DLC

I decided to give myself more motivation to play Ace Combat 6 by getting one of the Idolmaster itasentouki (like itasha only sentouki = fighter plane).
Considered Chihaya, Azusa, Yukiho and Makoto's. Don't really like Chihaya's dance outfit and hate Azusa's visual outfit, though, so I ruled them out leaving Yukiho and Makoto. Eventually decided on Yukiho simply because I like her more. Nice plane, too.

Minimum amount of points you can purchase at a time is 500, though, and the plane was 400 which would leave me with 100. What the hell can you get for 100 points?

Thus I went and bought 2000 points instead.

I've only used half of it so far; The 600 went to the L4U Aidora 765 Pro Meisaku Gekijou and Saint Shirobara Jogakuin. The former was kind of meh and I would've considered it an absolute waste of money if it didn't come with two extend costumes (due to them I simply consider it a slight waste of money), but the latter was immensely awesome. I do believe it's the best Aidora I've seen so far.

Chihaya as Alice and Yukiho as Hoshino was very nice, as were all of the adlib portions.

I still haven't spent all that much on 360 DLC, mostly because there isn't much to buy DLC aside from L4U, and L4U's DLC is hideously expensive (1200 points for a song? Seriously?). Including the stuff I got today, just four Aidora and Kosmos, Cosmos.

On the other hand, I've spent relatively quite a bit on Idolmaster SP. Most of the Aidora, all mail addesses except Ritsuko's, and lots of songs (mostly for Chihaya and Azusa). I have less in the way of costumes, just the swimsuit and Yukata Maid.

By the way, speaking of Ace Combat 6? I played it for a bit after getting that plane.
Few things* can compare to that feeling you get when, after shooting down shit for forty-five minutes and nearing the end of stage, you accidentally crash into the ground and die.

*Getting back attacked and killed before you can even do anything after climbing thirty stories in Tartarus in Persona 3 without saving is pretty damned comparable.


Addition: Just for the hell of it, I made a list of DLC I've bought in SP so far.

My Song (Azusa) - 150 yen
My Song (Chihaya) - 150 yen
My Song (Hibiki) - 150 yen
My Song (Yukiho) - 150 yen
Aidora: Kazoku no Kyuujitsu - 500 yen
Yukata Maid - 1000 yen
Kimi wa Melody (Azusa) - 150 yen
Aidora: Chibi Yukiho no Bouken - 500 yen
Gravure Mizugi - 300 yen
Do-Dai (Azusa) - 150 yen
Anmin(?) Aidora-shuu - 300 yen
Furufuru Future (Azusa) - 150 yen
Furufuru Future (Miki) - 150 yen
Aidora: Azusa no Uranai - 300 yen
Kosmos, Cosmos (Chihaya) - 150 yen
Meisou Mind (Chihaya) - 150 yen
Meisou Mind (Azusa) - 150 yen
Tonari ni... (Chihaya) - 150 yen
Kiramekirari (Azusa) - 150 yen
Futari no Kioku (Azusa) - 150 yen
Me ga Au Toki (Azusa) - 150 yen
Mail address x8 (everyone except Ritsuko) - 800 yen

Total: 6950 yen

...not as much as I thought. That's not excluding the extra I have to fork out when not getting the PSN tickets in person (i.e. getting them online), though.

Also, I haven't gotten any for some time and thus don't have anything from catalogues #9-11. Yet.

This week on IRC

(Nicks are changed to protect identities or whatever)

[15:55] <@Nekama> Have fun
01[15:56] <@Me> ur moms a red cinese comiunitst
[15:56] <@Streaker[work]> But she means well!
01[15:56] <@Me> So did CHAIRMAN MAO
01[15:58] <@Me> EAT PLASMA FIRE, ALIEN SCUM

1[17:03] <@Me> Doesn't sound as awesome as my Fallout 3 experience, though.
01[17:03] <@Me> I enter Megaton.
01[17:03] <@Me> (Silence>
01[17:03] <@Me> OH WAIT EVERYONE IS DEAD.
01[17:03] <@Me> :]
[17:04] <@Streaker> Imagine if you could not only do that but you're wrecking buildings too.
[17:04] <@Streaker> Since pretty much every building in the game is destructible.
01[17:04] <@Me> Are there giant robots?

1[23:35] <@Me> mery clitoris
01[23:35] <@Me> DOG
[23:36] <@21> merry christmas
[23:36] <@21> DOGEATER
01[23:40] <@Me> no u



<@21> 12歳までは守備範囲内。13歳以上は熟女、15歳以上は年増、18歳以上はババァ、20歳以上は化石。反論は認めん。





[15:51] <@Me> That alone makes the game awesome and is enough to determine that anyone who says otherwise sucks cocks and listens to rap music.
[15:53] <@Streaker[AtWork]> Well, I listen to rap music, but not the stuff that gets played widely. Also my rap gets shuffled with J-pop, western rock, R&B, classical, and video game music.
[15:53] <@Me> DO YOU DRESS IN BAGGY CLOTHING AND END EVERY SENTENCE WITH "YO"
[15:53] <@Streaker[AtWork]> I do not
[15:53] <@Streaker[AtWork]> My pants go around my WAIST and I wear BELTS.
[15:53] <@Me> BULLSHIT I BET YOU COULD SUCK A GOLF BALL THROUGH A GARDEN HOSE
[15:54] <@Streaker[AtWork]> but what does that have to do with the price of tea in china
[15:54] <@Me> Everything.

Necron Monolith

I was rummaging through old photo folders when I ran into these, and figured I'd upload them.
A Warhammer 40K Necron Monolith. I've never actually played the game, but one of my friends from my school days did (and as far as I know still does) and used to bring those rulebook things with the background stories and stats and whatever. I flipped through some of them and loved the Necrons' setting (I mean, what's there not to love about Egyptian space necromancer robots?), and when I played Dawn of War: Dark Crusade I fell in love with them again.

And bought the hideously overpriced Monolith kit.

My exposure to model kits is usually limited to just snapping together and panel lining Gunpla, so a totally unpainted, cementing-required kit is pretty rare for me. This was only my second, in fact, after a Muv-Luv Kasumi garage kit that didn't turn out very nice (you can spot it all the way in the back partially hidden behind Sumika in the second photo here).

Thankfully it's not like the monolith requires any fancy painting, what with it being mostly just black with just a bit of stuff on the door.

Anyway, I modified mine to light up when plugged in to a USB power source (I also have a convenient battery-powered USB power source so it doesn't need to be near a computer to light up). Nothing fancy, just cut a hole in the back wall while building it for the cable, and another below the crystal for the light to get through. The end result wasn't as fancy as I'd hoped it would be, though, which I made up for with camera settings and ambient lighting in the above photos.

I don't suppose I'll ever build another Warhammer kit again, so this'll be my first and last. Not too bad a choice, I think.

Cleared Ghostbusters

Cleared Ghostbusters. It was alright, but I don't think I'll be replaying it any time soon. Gameplay was kind of repetitive, and bosses were pretty but not very interesting.Messing around with the slime tethers was tons of fun, though, and what the hell, it's the fucking Ghostbusters. Busting ghosts. That alone makes it worth getting.

Anyway, I have limited hard drive space and 10 GB is kind of a lot, so I've uninstalled it already. Currently downloading Indigo Prophecy and Splinter Cell: Double Agent, both fresh from the Steam sale.

Light Novels

I've always enjoyed ranobe but somehow, the desire to read for me comes in waves. Sometimes I just don't feel like doing any reading even when I literally have nothing else to do; Other times I go through a book a day for up to a week or two on end.

I've recently started on three new series: Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai, Utsuro no Hako to Zero no Maria, and Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai. All three were recommendations from Amazon, and I enjoyed them, thoroughly, especially Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai.

Anyway, I picked up the latest (2010) edition of Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi! when I was at Kinokuniya on Christmas Day. I've only read one of the top five this year, and three of the top ten. On the 08 ranking I'd read three of the top five. Ah well, at least Bungakushoujo did pretty well.

What the fuck.

Thunderstorm here right now.

Lightning struck and shorted my power, and when it came back up fucking Vista on my desktop decided that the wired connection to my router doesn't fucking exist anymore.
What. The. FUCK?

Device manager's network adapters only has my wireless thing left, so fried card, probably.

Spectacular.

Ah well, still have wireless which is better than nothing, and I don't download anything on the desktop anyway; It's too crappy to run any of the games I have on Steam. Even Audiosurf.

Armored Core For Answer

Some of my ACs from ACFA.

Tales of Vesperia

Just for the hell of it, some shots of my stuff in Vesperia which I cleared about two months ago.








Only one playthrough so far, really need to start on my second.

HAPPY CLITORIS EVE

It's Christmas and being Catholic and all I ought to be attending midnight mass tonight.

Instead I shall spend the whole day in my room playing video games.

Addition: And at 2 AM on Christmas day I finally cleared Tales of the Abyss.

Audiosurf

One of the games I got from Steam's holiday sale was Audiosurf which is pretty cool. And at only $2.50 right now it's a total steal.

Just saying.

Busou Shinki

I've been playing Battle Rondo for some time now (date on my earliest screenshot says 27th December 07, so almost two years) and figured I ought to do a post on it.

I don't play much, and it typically takes me a looooong time to raise a single Shinki. I've been raising my Werkstra-type since the update that added them, and my Eukrante-type for... I can't even remember how long.

I've pretty much given up on getting my Eukrante to S-class due to an abyssmal victory rate, though, so I'm only really raising the Werkstra right now.
Basically I just have her jet the hell out of the enemy's range and snipe at them till they die. Simple, but effective. Well, sort of; Lately there've been a lot of people using those accursed Ach-type's leg parts and the skill that comes with them even cancels out Angelic Sky which is annoying the hell out of me. Ah well.

My highest-levelled Shinki is Sumika the black Arnval-type at level 180, but my strongest is Yuduki (white Arnval) at 150, also the first I ever had.
I guess I did something right while raising her; Her AI's the smartest of all my Shinki, using skills with deadly efficiency. And by skills I mean Tempest.

Here're some of my stats.
And finally, a two-shot of Yuduki and Sumika.
And that's all for now. ノシ

Steam's holiday sale

looks pretty awesome.

Didn't get much, just these:
The only other things I really want are Arkham Asylum and Dawn of War II but I'll wait till they're cheaper.

I've also been pondering getting that Sherlock Holmes VS Cthulhu game for some time but no sale and I've heard bad things about the gameplay. Maybe if/when it's down to $5 or so.

Addition, 24th December 09: Also got Silent Hunter: Wolves of the Pacific ($10) and Splinter Cell: Double Agent ($5)

26th December: Got Indigo Prophecy ($3) too. I've been interested in Heavy Rain ever since seeing it in a magazine a couple of months ago and this is a spiritual predecessor to it, apparently.

3rd January: Last day of sale. Got Splinter Cell (the first one, $5), the Sherlock Holmes VS Cthulhu game I mentioned above (The Awakened, it was $10 but eh), the Blazing Angels pack (whim, $12.50), HAWX (also whim, $15) and Red Alert 3 Uprising (I'd been planning on getting it for ages anyway, $7 is just plain awesome).

So, in the end roughly $90 altogether for fourteen games. Pretty nice.

Steins;Gate review

Figured I'd start reviewing stuff here. Since Steins;Gate is the most recently cleared game in my library, I guess I'll start with it.

Steins;Gate is the second game in the 5pb. x Nitroplus collaboration's "science adventure series", following Chaos;Head. It takes place in the same world, but aside from a handful of slight references is wholly unrelated. I found this is a good thing, for reasons discussed before.

Anyway, the premise of the game is simple; The protagonists accidentally invent a machine that can send mail back in time and thus change the past, and get embroiled in a giant conspiracy. To discuss (which, I'd like to note, the game's manual does) is to spoil some awesome shit, and if you're planning on getting the game I'd advise refraining from reading any more (also avoid the manual and official site; Hell, seal the internet). If you're not, keep reading.

(Spoilers, highlight to read) The main characters mess with their device and change the past a couple of times, until one day some armed thugs burst in to their hideout and kill one of them, Shiina Mayuri. Their time machine has been upgraded and can now send a person's memories and consciousness back in time, and the protagonist, Okabe Rintarou, uses it to try and save her. No matter what he does, and how many times he tries, though, she ends up dying on the same day at the same time, not just from being shot but from all sorts of reasons, including some nutty accidents.

It turns out that (LOL SCIENCE warning) the world's timeline is composed of countless world-lines intertwined, representing countless possibilities, but each world-line is enveloped in an "attractor field" which determines what will happen no matter what, and that due to their meddling with their machine they are currently on a world line that will no matter what lead to Mayuri's death and even better, SERN (the game world's counterpart of CERN) creating a time machine (oh, and their LHC was made for creating black holes for a time machine) in 2034 "conquering space-time" in 2036 and bringing about a dystopian rule by the Committee of 300.

(Bigger spoilers ahead, this is a good point to stop reading.)
Anyway, Okabe sets out to fix time and get back to his original world line only to recall that in his original world, he saw one of his friends (also main heroine), Makise Kurisu, dead. He's thus faced with having to decide which of the two lives or dies.

I won't spoil the ending but it's better than I thought it'd be.

I went in with practically no prior knowledge at all, didn't bother to look at the official site, and of course didn't read the manual, getting the game only because I need more 360 games. I wasn't expecting much (because, again, Chaos;Head), but it betrayed my expectations in a good way.

Anyway, what's a review without evaluating shit with numbers based solely on your own opinion? Thus, with 10 being utterly flawless, 5 being average and 0 being total rubbish...

Plot/setting: 9
Awesome.

Writing: 7
Good for the most part but a lot of endings are, as I said, half-assed, and there's way too much in the way of plot holes and unexplained stuff.

Characters: 9
Likable.

Sound: 9
(Music: 8, Voice: 10)

System: 6
The phone trigger system is a cool concept but worked out horribly, and auto saves could be done better. The tips system is nice, otherwise the game's system is nothing special.

Overall: 8
(Not an average, just something I slap on after considering other factors)

Edit (June 2012): I'd just like to add that this is one of those games that gets better when you look back at it some time later. Gave it an 8 when I first cleared it, would give it a 9-10 now.


　 　　　 　＿
　　　　　/　　λ
　 　　 ～～～～　
　　　　/　´・ω・） 　　＜トゥットゥルー
　_, ‐'´　 ＼　 /　`ｰ､_ 　　
/ '￣｀Y´￣｀Y´￣｀レ⌒ヽ
{　､　 ﾉ､　 　 |　　_,,ﾑ,_　ﾉl
'い　ヾ`ー～'´￣__っ八　ﾉ
＼ヽ､　　 ー　／　ー　　〉
　 ＼｀ヽ-‐'´￣｀冖ｰ-/

I just noticed...

That with the addition of Master Special Winter and Dream Symphony 02 (which I just got last Thursday), my Idolmaster playlist has hit 10 hours.

And that's excluding talk tracks and stuff I don't like (some covers, mostly from Radio, and most of the remasters).

The current contents of my iPod (which I've named Chihaya) are:

Altogether, Idolmaster audio adds up to around 3 GB = more than a third of all my audio. Nice.

By the way, 千早は俺の嫁。 Just saying.

Kira ☆ Kira on the Apple apps store

I just noticed that Mtrix has released Kira ☆ Kira for the iPhone. Damn it, why do they keep releasing stuff that I already have that I for some reason want to buy again? Thankfully between Gift and Memories Off and my ripping DVDs and sticking Idolmaster videos onto mine, I'm out of space and can't buy it (I know this because I got a space warning when my instinct made me hit the buy button immediately upon seeing it). Well, not for now, at least.

Aside from the unnecessarily lol wut (spoiler) LOL MAIN HEROINE DIES IN A FIRE route, it's good. And at under $20, cheap too. Judging from Gift this is probably a toned-down port of the PC version, not the PS2 version, but the only real difference anyway is the songs and the PC version's are better anyway.

Don't blame me if you end up spending several times that on getting all the d2b CDs after though.

Steins;Gate, clear

Cleared Steins;Gate in three days. Hooray for me.
Total playtime of 36 hours which adds up to, what, 12 hours a day? Nice.

I only really got it because I felt I needed more games for the 360. Also, I hated Chaos;Head (PC version, they apparently added more shit to the 360 version but I'm never touching that thing or anything related to it again) and thus wasn't expecting much, especially since I'd heard that this takes place in the same universe. But I hated Chaos;Head pretty much from the beginning (mostly due to the main character rubbing me the wrong way), while I immediately started to enjoy Steins;Gate. I was wary, though, because it was the last bits of Chaos;Head that really spoiled the whole thing for me (ridiculous story and magic swords and the main character annoying the fuck out of me, among other things).

Well, I finished all of Steins;Gate and I can confidently say that it was fantastic.

Only two complaints; First is that pretty much all the endings besides the true one being kind of half-assed. But eh, the true end made up for it. Second is what the fuck is up with all the plot holes and half-assed pseudoscience?

Speaking of the true end (highlight for spoilers), I usually hate the whole "she forgets him and he resigns to never meeting her again but then she walks pass him by sheer chance on the street and she turns around" thing, but then the "joshu" made up for all of it. It doesn't make sense to me HOW it should make me all happy about everything when I think about it, but it did, so eh.

Ah well, time to find something else to play.

Addition, 22nd December 09: I found that last CG I was missing in the above picture.
..Gel Mayu.

First post.

Starting a blog on a whim. Yay for me.



魔法少女 ブログ、はじめました。