Today I finally overcame my massive losses in Blazblue. When I started playing I got owned left and right and built up a huge number of losses but today I finally overcame it. At 192 wins and 192 losses I tied it and I just beat an Arakune. I now won more than 50% of the time. Hurray. Lets hope it stays that way lol.

Well I suppose its time to cement my rank amongst the ranks of the biggest Japanophiles of the weeaboo tribe by posting my top 5 favorite chicks from anime/manga of all time. So here we go...

#5: Nami (One Piece)

Nami is in here almost as a token representative of One Piece. One Piece just happens to be my favorite manga of all time so I figured a character from the series really ought to be on the list and who better than Nami, one of the earliest characters to be introduced. She acts as the voice of reason amongst the ranks of her completely moronic crew even though her words of wisdom often go completely ignored.

So sure she comes off a bit naggy and she isn't all that great at combat but like I said, One Piece needs to be on this list somewhere so boom, Nami.

#4 Enma Ai (Jigoku Shoujo, Hell Girl)

She is Karma incarnate into a cold uncaring minion of Hell. Make someone hate you enough and they can access the Hotline to Hell website where upon entering your name and hitting submit Enma Ai will appear before them handing them a doll with a string around its neck. Untie the string and you've earned yourself a nice psychological torture with a trip to Hell following immediately after. Of course the person who cursed you pays a price. They go to Hell as well upon their deaths having cursed another.

Its not an easy job. Sure sometimes the person deserved it but that's not always the case. Sometimes a nice hardworking kind caring loveable person who never wronged anyone in their life gets sent to Hell over petty things like jealousy but Enma Ai must carry out her duty regardless of personal feelings.

She comes off as cold and apathetic at first but slowly you can begin to see how much her job hurts her as well as the citizens of the world.

#3 Mikuru Asahina (Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu, The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi)

Me and a friend came across a famous dance that all the hardcore cosplay weeaboos know and love and it turns out to be from the end credits of this series. We looked it up on animeseason.com and the description was outrageous. So outrageous in fact that I decided to watch the first episode expecting to be laugh at a horrendously bad series.

Well I laughed but not because it was bad. Far from it actually. This series blew my mind. Not only was it hilarious but it also had some awesome Matrix-reminiscent mind exploding plot that just might make you question reality. And then on top of that it had some fighting. And it was good. It was great. I dropped my jaw because I had set the bar below sealevel and it soared above it and went beyond the stars.

And of course Asahina is a major source of the hilarity as she is literally kidnapped and forced to join Haruhi's club. As if that weren't bad enough she essentially gets enslaved and is subject to the will of Haruhi no matter how questionable it may be. All the while being very cute and sympathetic and you just kinda sit there going "aww poor Asahina :( "

#2 Lucy/Nyu (Elfen Lied)

Ever since watching Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and practically oozing hapiness from every oraface every time its mentioned I've picked up this somewhat questionable fascination for stories in which everything goes as absolutely horrible disgusting and depressing as (in)humanly possible and boy oh boy does that describe Lucy.

Having had a rather miserable past due to her horns and powers she grows up to be a psycho ***** to put it nicely. The opening scene of the show/manga is her breaking out of her containment and casually strolling out of the lab slaughtering everyone who had the poor judgement to be within eyesight. But a poorly placed bullet to the head causes her to lose her memories and develop a second personality, one that is essentially a baby having no idea how the world works or how to speak.

Well the drama created between her past that becomes reveled over time, and when and where she will switch personalities creates a fascinating and heartwrenching story as well as hugely interesting characters and interactions between them. This is one of my all time favorite series. It was so good I watched the whole series then immediately went and read it as well.

#1 Yomi (Ga-rei Zero/Ga-Rei)

Yomi isn't my favorite anime girl of all time. Yomi isn't my favorite anime character of all time. Yomi just might be my single favorite fictional character from any medium, ever, period.

Never in all my days have I become as attatched to any fictional character as I became to Yomi. And the surprising part is Ga-Rei Zero, my introduction to her character, isn't even that long a series as compared to others.

Ga-Rei Zero acts as a prequel to Ga-Rei. My introduction to the series was the prequel and I think that's the way to do it as the manga almost seems to expect you to understand their backstory. And what a backstory it is.

Over the course of Ga-Rei Zero Yomi and Kagura as well become incredibly well characterized. Its almost like Tarantino in rather than focusing on the girls in action all the time you see lots of the characters just spending time with eachother in their daily lives and as a result of all their conversation and interaction, acted and portrayed flawlessly, they grew on me. They grew on me a lot. Not just Yomi but Kagura as well but Yomi gets to be on the list as I like her more and her character is more dynamic.

I won't give away any spoilers but I grew very attatched to Yomi and it was all the more depressing when her fate takes a turn for the absolute worst. I would even go so far as to say she recieves as fate infinitely worse than death and I was genuinely upset over it. To this day when I read the manga every time she's mentioned I go "omg noooo Yomi :("

She's just so well characterized. She's got all the craziness most anime characters have with quasi super powers but she isn't infallible and she acts like a real human which is probably why I'm so endeared to her. She's realistic and loveable and the events that lead to the end of the series really made me truly empathize with her and feel for her character, not something easily done.

She's a great character and I highly recommend the series to anyone and everyone who hasn't seen it.

And thats the list. I can't believe I actually did this blog. Damn I'm a nerd.

Ok so I decided to make my first playthrough of Killzone 2 on the hardest available difficulty from the onset, Veteran. Well I beat the game but god DAMN did they make me work for it. I mean I had a lot of clumsy deaths from the get go because I was figuring out the controls and the cover system, etc. but once I got the hang of it I was able to get through the first 3 or 4 missions with relative ease and maybe 2-3 deaths per mission.

Then the difficulty curve got schizophrenia and decided to jump so high a pole vaulter would lower their head in shame. I mean there were a few rooms along the way that just mercilessly beat the living crap out of me. Then immediately after they would provide me with a piss easy boss fight (the arc trooper) and then they let me use his gun which is easily the most over powered gun I've been allowed to use in a game. Not only does it have infinite ammo, it also does eighty gajillion damage. Oh and it connects to nearby enemies too. Then it was an ass whooping in an air turret because apparently you win by running out of missiles and I was using my damned machine gun the whole time. Then another nice easy stoll down mech suit pwnge lane.

Oh yeah I forgot there was that canyon filled with snipers. Btw getting shot ANYWHERE with a sniper rifle in this game is a 1 hit kill. Not just the head. Sprinting through that, bad idea.

Ok so while some sections in the later game brutally kicked my ass and others were a nice relaxing slaughter there were 2 sections that are especially worthy of note.

1. The train. I'm on top of a train. Get to the other end of it and take control of it. Alright fair enough. Advance up the train. Kill some enemies. Blah blah blah. Then we get to a turret section. Easy enough use turret on enemies preferably in the face. THEN. THEN!!!! Keep in mind its just me and 1 AI buddy right now. I come around a tanker to a few pieces of cover, a rocket launcher, a tank, and enough enemies to make the Horde officially change their name to the "meagerly sized squad". I ran out of ammo on so many guns that I had to lure half of the enemy waves back to the turret to even have a chance of taking them out.

Needless to say this part kicked my ass for a good while but FINALLY I was able to kill all the waves of enemies, get the rockets, and blow up the tank. "PHEW" I let out as I advanced expecting there to surely be a checkpoint after all that. No checkpoint. Just another wave of enemies. One of them had a rocket launcher. I died. I went "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" darth vader style. I did it again after another bazillion tries and I had to take out that last extra wave by running back really far and revolver sniping them because it has infinite ammo.

2. This is without question the king of "OMGHARD!!!!!!!" moments in the game. The final mission. Fitting I suppose. It begins with an assault on the leader's palace which is unsurprisingly very well defended. This wasn't even that bad. It took a long time to push all the way to the palace doors but I did it with incredibly low deaths for the situation. Maybe 1 or 2 for this whole stretch. Then the hard part. The inside of Vasari's palace. This has potential to be my greatest achievement as a gamer. I'll have to ponder that before making it official but, by god it was hard. Radec sends wave after wave after wave at you in a room with VERY minimal cover. I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing. I was trying to snipe Radec up top while fighting off the troops. Then they start coming around from the second floor and dropping down behind you. Then they have flame throwers. Then they have rocket launchers.

I actually got to the checkpoint once only to die before actually getting the checkpoint. That was annoying. Then I FINALLY get the checkpoint and move upstairs. Killing all the guys upstairs is easy as there are only 3 but then Radec will again just send more and more waves. I picked up an actual sniper and tried that for a while and found that it wasn't too effective until of course, the rocket launcher guys got spawned. Then THANK YOU JESUS ANOTHER CHECKPOINT! Oh wait. More waves of enemies. Except now the rocket launcher guys move around limiting my cover to one corner. I'm no scoping guys and meleeing others frantically trying to survive until another checkpoint.

Then I finally get the assignment to kill Radec. He teleports behind you then whips out his knife and kills you in two hits. I came up with a system to not die but let me put it this way, not counting the times I died, the fight lasted 24 minutes and 43 seconds. I didn't get the quickly beaten boss trophy :(

All in all for the entire final mission I had 49 deaths. The whole thing took me about 4 hours. Yup. 4 whole hours. Checkpoints were few and far between and I would hold out for insane amounts of time before getting killed by some ass who jumped down from behind my and blew my face off before I even knew he was there.

Oh and that whole time I had to babysit Rico because he doesn't understand that bullets = bad.

That being said, really fun game. Just wish it didn't beat me up and take my lunch money. (I suppose I asked for it by picking veteran though and really it was just 3 or 4 sections that REALLY kicked the crap out of me).

Having recently gotten a paycheck (that was long overdue) from the job I had over the winter as a councelor at a sports program for kids noticing that it was just enough for a PS3 and therefore also well over enough for a 360 I figured "why not. I've missed some sick games being a wii only owner. I should get one". Then began the research. Back in 2006 if future me told past me I was going to buy a PS3 at some point I might have fallen over laughing. I thought of the console as a joke back then. Sure the 360's were exploding and what not but at least they had exclusives that were worth a damn.

Well as it turns out over the past 3 years the PS3 has significantly improved their line up the pinnacle of such being inFAMOUS, Valkyria Chronicles, MAG, God of War III, etc. Considering the only exlusives on 360 I'd get would be Halo 3, Mass Effect (2), and maybe Gears, I was leaning towards the PS3 side of the coin.

The thing to push me over the edge was actually a silly comment. I was watching the Backloggery Live stream of Uncharted when Nathan came upon the corpse of Drake (I think. I missed some plot). Someone in the chat said something along the lines of "zombie time". I, a huge zombie fan, thought surely that was a joke. There's no way this game would have zombies. So I said "If this game has zombies I'll buy a PS3 tomorrow" and then BOOM. 5 seconds later, zombies.

I was like "OMGWTFBBQ". Immediately after that I believe it was drumble who said "looks like someone has to buy a PS3". Well I am a man of my word and that following Thursday I ordered a Killzone 2/MGS4 bundle from Best Buy due to arrive sometime this coming week.

Now I'm looking over all the multiplats and exclusives I've missed these past 3 years. I have quite a collection to build.

Well I had my first Conduit rage quit and was quite the epic ragequit. Anyone who knows me probably knows I have a temper and a very low tolerance for frustration. During the SAT's because I had to sit and wait for the end of the section before I could continue, thus wasting my time by dragging out the test, I almost crushed my pencil into two pieces. Oh man and every time the proctor said 5 minutes remaining, boy did that get on my nerves.

Anyway for several games in a row I was playing with a group of people who were pretty much on my level. There's nothing wrong with that, in fact thats a good thing. What does piss me off though is having my kills stolen. For an entire match EVERY SINGLE ENGAGEMENT I got into went like this. I attack person. Person and me get into heated fire fight. I'm about to finish off person. Person got me down to about half health. Guy comes along and kills person as I'm about to get off the finishing shot. Kill is stolen. I am weakened and need to reload. Guy kills me as he has a full clip. I die.

It went like that or variations of that involving 4 people all attacking me at the same time for several consecutive matches. Not to mention the mini team. It seems a couple of friends were talking to eachother via the phone or skype or the like and were working cooperatively as a team. This was especially a pain in ASE football where one guy held the ASE and the other ambushed me every time I went to kill his buddy. Then in quick matches they just ran around together teaming up on people. AKA CHEATERS.

After several rounds of this I just couldn't take it anymore and then came the most epic ragequit I've had to date. My original wrist strap has been immune to everything and my TV remains unscathed, that is until today. My wrist strap was ripped to shreds from the wiimote. My couch and chair got a pummeling. My chair especially which now has a permanent handprint from my fist. My soda cans were crushed by bare feet. A box of Cheezeits has been exploded via screwdriver impalement which was rather dumb on my part as there are crumbs everywhere now :(

There was no permanent damage done to anything really important. Some minor permanent damage to the chair and bed but nothing that will make it unusable. And my hand got but up a bit on the wood but I'm used to that and I'm like a masachist light so I tote it proudly in a sense. Oh and a bitemark on my nunchuck.

To all of you who are like "oh my such an angry child you need help its just a game" don't lie. You've thrown down the controller in rage. Everyone who's played a reasonable amount of games that doesn't have the patience of a saint has had one of these moments. Its true. Besides sometimes breaking **** is the best therapy am I right?

Therapists should just have a really nice room, give you a baseball bat, and say go. That'd be an awesome business. Anyway steams been blown, all calmed down :P

I don't ragequit often and they're usually not this bad but after an hour of having my kills stolen EVERY SINGLE TIME. Keep in mind I mean this literally. EVERY. TIME. I just snapped.

(I control myself better with people around :P)

In an attempt to prevent myself from insanity at not having the Conduit yet (especially knowing other people do because some stores cheated) I decided I had to distract myself somehow. I went looking for animes (I usually read manga but felt lazy :) ) and seeing as how the last anime I watched, Higurashi no naku koro ni, was so freaking awesome I didn't even care that it made less sense than the fact that platypuses exist. So I went and googled "crap similiar to that" and they gave me Ghost Story. Let me say this is the first anime with its official demographic listed as "female" that I've watched from beginining to end (in fact my only other experience with anything termed shoujo or josei is when it comes on after a nice manly show on the funimation chanel or something).

Anyway the only reason I even decided to give this series a chance without instantaneously shooting it down due to its target audience was because I saw some pics or clips of it where there was some creepy dude covered in blood staring down a girl as if to say "I am going to kill you so bad that you won't even recognize you". If anyone knows me, I like horror, gore or not. All I ask is that if there's gore in a movie it not be senseless. I don't like gore for the sake of gore, I like gore used to a good effect. Well thats not entirely ture as madworld kinda has gore for the sake of gore but it's also what made the game so damn stylish and cool so whatever.

Anyway I was right about the series. There was a lot more awesome ghost action and mystery than there was "oh lovee dovee silly little girlish glee and stupidity". I mean every once in a while usually briefly between two "oh **** I'm going to die" moments I had to sit through 2 minutes of "oh she's so jealous blah blah blah" nonsense but the good parts outweighed the "shut UP" parts.

As much as I hate to admit some of the inbetween nonsense actually made me laugh a bit. I hate that I found humor in their stupid love triangle but there it was and every time I caught myself laughing I was like "aw dammit but its funny". Then there were other times when it was just not funny and I was just like "get on with it so we can get back to the possessed dude with a knife please".

But yeah the ghost scenes were for the most part good. Some of the mysteries were predictable and I was like "Um X is the one who cast the curse" 2 minutes into the story arc but other times I was just totally wrong. Anyway if you check your manhood at the door this is a decent enough series. Higurashi is better (and I also had an interesting start into Higurashi as the first 2 chapters of the manga were like "hey lets cosplay and dress up the only male character in a french maid outfit" so I was like "why is this labeled horror ._." so I skipped ahead 3 chapters and it only took me one panel to be like "oh, that's why...I should probably keep reading this...") but that's a given because I love that series.

But yeah. Maybe some of those other horror series labeled shoujo might actually have some value in there but I'm still going to approach with caution to avoid what I like to call "no longer a man" syndrome. I'm listening to Gojira right now after finishing the series just to regain any lost manhood during the stupid scenes.

But yeah, decent series is decent

I've seen a couple of religious rants, preachings, etc scattered throughout my life the past several days and I decided as an athiest to explain why I think there is no such thing as a god and why I'm against organized religion. If you are a religious person and are reading this I'm not going to sit here and hate on religion in the sense that I'm going to make claims like "God is dumb and so is everyone who believes in one", I'm going to try and rationally explain the reasoning that lead me to believe there is no god and why I struggle to understand why people do believe in a god. I will also try to express why I am against organized religion. If you feel you'd be offended by this then, stop reading. Simple yes?

Lets start with why I don't think there is a God. First of all lets take a look at the origin of religion and the steps its taken as its evolved. Ancient people had very primitive science with no means to explain natural phenomena such as tornados or lightning. Unable to provide any logical reason for tornados and the like people invented a reason, something was angry at them, the gods. The whole concept of Gods and deities originated because people were unable to explain very simple natural occurences that we can explain today.

That then brings me to my next point, the evolution of God. Most early religions were polytheistic and now today most major religions are monotheistic. Somewhere along the line something had to change yes? The earliest religions like Zorastrianism are now nearly extinct while newer religions like Christianity and Judaism came to be. Greek Mythology is now considered just that, mythology, but to the Greeks it was just as true as Christianity is to Christains. There are so many different religions out there from Islam to Christianity to Judaism to Shintoism to Bhuddism to Hinduism to Daoism and so on. How can any member of any of those groups claim "we're the ones who are right, all the other religions have it wrong". And even if one of those religions were right and all the others were wrong does that mean everyone who was raised believing in the wrong god is doomed to eternal damnation? To me it just doesn't make any sense.

In addition to that the effect religion has had on people even in this modern era can range from silly to ridiculous. The fact that, I'm not sure of the exact statistic, but a ridiculous amount of the Republican party candidates for the presidency raised their hands when asked if they did not believe in evolution is extraordinary to me. There is so much scientific evidence to suggest that evolution is how things happen in this world that to believe otherwise would be almost outright insane. Even if evolution isn't correct, creationism is (and this might be the one direct shot I take at specific religions) absolute insanity. Creationism should've died the second the first fossil was discovered but no, to this day it's widely believed in some places and it certainly plagues the republican party. I consider myself a moderate politically and I can say I'm not a fan of Bush or Obama and many of Obama's policies concern me very much but the Democrats are going to continue to dominate elections until the Republicans stop walking around preaching because outside of the bible belt no one actually takes them seriously anymore. They need to stop being the party that caters to angry old men and go back to their fiscally conservative roots. Back on topic with Relgion however I was told that in some states creationism is required to be taught along side evolution in biology classes. So much for separation of church and state.

The idea that what I believe to be a fictional deity is so influencial in people's actions and every day behavior is both crazy and frightening to me. People making decisions because they "heard the voice of god" when what they should be doing is getting checked for schitzophrenia because they're hearing voices in their heads. More importantly many of these people who make claims like this are the ones with signifigant power (Bush). I have no problems with the message that Religion is at its heart trying to preach, be kind, be moral, etc but people have warped religion into something evil and monstrous. Religion has been a justification for countless wars and acts of violence, the crusades, 9/11 (something I could witness from my own back yard, I also knew someone who's father was killed), the war in Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the holocaust (although this should probably be considered more genetic than religious), human sacrifices ontop of Aztec temples. The list is far to long to write up completely.

What started as a means to explain the unknown mutated into a (perfectly acceptable) message of benevolence and was then further mutated into a corrupt means to do harm onto eachother. I'm an athiest, I don't believe in God, that doesn't make me some sort of heathanistic puppy slaughtering satan worshipping psychopath like some very religious people might think. I mean I'm no saint but I'm not completely amoral either. There's no reason people need a man in a robe to tell them how to live their lives. People should live life, experience situations, and construct their own moral codes based upon those experiences. People should be taught moral codes from their parents, not that blowing themselves up and 20 other people on a bus will lead them straight to eternal paradise. Without religion the world wouldn't fall into chaos in fact I think it'd be a better place as religion sprouts so much violence that its reached the point of absolute insanity.

People fear the unknown and people are curious creatures. We can't help ourselves but to wonder what comes after life and many seek answer through religion. The truth is we really have no feaking clue. Priest X will preach one thing and Monk Y will preach another. People shouldn't look to these figures for answers, they should live life to the fullest and discover their own answers to the mystery of life. I don't believe in an afterlife, it doesn't mean I sit cowering in fear at the concept of death. Sure I'm not looking forward to the day I die but its going to come eventually and when it does that's the only time I'll ever find the real truth. Who knows maybe I'm just spouting total nonsense right now and there is a heaven. In that case, awesome. I just don't see it happening that way though.

God was invented as a means to explain simple phenomena and god has come in so many forms over the years how can anyone claim to be right. The truth is we can't really know for sure but I haven't seen any evidence to suggest the presence of a higher being. If there is a higher being it certainly isn't personally involved in everyone's life like many people want to claim. All in all I see no proof, just a supersticious explanation and that is why I don't believe in God or religion.

(athiests are the most mistrusted group in America. Kind of ridiculous that me not believing in something someone else does means I should be mistrusted. Kind of like a 4 year old not trusting their parents because they told them there was no boogeyman)

It motivated me to go back and finish Fire Emblem. (well I'm not done but got a good chunk outta part 3 done today) and I thuroughly enjoyed it. Only problem is I played for 8 straight hours and can't see right anymore.

Thanks backloggery

I found a site called the backloggery. Pretty cool idea. You list all your games and your progress through them (unfinished, beaten, completed, and master run). From this you can then see what you should go back and finish up. I like the idea cause I have some games that could use some beating or completing (especially VC and wiiware for me). Anyway check it out

http://backloggery.com/

I just got an imac. its kinda the coolest thing ever made. It runs so much faster than my old comp and everything about it is just filled with so much win. I'm currently putting some games on it so I can do those. Its pretty awesome