Comments(0) Got a bit of gaming done in June. Didn’t pick up the PSP at all, but got some nice gameplay into the PS3.
So yeah, that’s it from me this month. Not so much quantity, but I did finish one whole complete game and enjoyed the fuck out of it. Yay me!
Comments(0) I’ve been playing Assassin’s Creed for most of these past two weeks. I finished all of the main quests and only really have the Templar killing and flag collecting side quests left to do, which I may or may not bother with. I’d heard a lot of negative opinion about it, but in spite of that I’ve really been enjoying it. It helps that I’m a medieval history geek of course.
Comments(0) Well shit. I went and bought a cellphone for NZ$300 last December, then they have to go and announce this. I could maybe justify buying one with the “I need to replace my 1GB iPod” excuse. Maybe. Hmm.
Strangely enough the “iPhone coming to New Zealand in July” rumour was actually right. Doubly strange because I got it from The New Zealand Herald 2 months ago.
Feature summary:
Seriously, considering the iPhone is a high end smartphone that competes with the likes of the Nokia N95 (retailing for NZ$999), I can’t see any other scenario than Vodafone massively jacking up the prices (even more than they usually do!) in order force it to fit in with their existing catalogue, which makes me sad. It’ll blow my mind if they actually do sell it here for ~$260.
But yeah, the price is a big thing for me. As Time Magazine rather sarcastically notes, “Steve Jobs did something never before seen in the history of Apple: He unveiled a cutting-edge product that’s relatively cheap.“
Of course, that being said there’s still various flaws. The camera is still 2 megapixel with no flash, and no front camera for video calls. No video recording either, and I use that sometimes. The battery is still non-removable, so if it goes, you’ll be a sad panda. The new iPhone is actually thicker than the old one (but still weighs less, and the difference is in millimetres anyway). No MMS, so no sending or receiving PXTs. Bluetooth is still somewhat crippled, not that I’d really use it for anything other than copying stuff onto and off the phone. Copy and paste is still unavailable also, which I guess is an issue, but not really a dealbreaker for me. Storage is still 8GB and 16GB, with no 32GB iPhone in sight. And the back is plastic compared to the metal casing of the first iPhone, so durability could take a hit.
That said, I kind of want it. My main issue of lack of 3G has been solved and I like the GPS. Certainly the price is attractive. Ideally if it didn’t do what I wanted it to there’d be a 3rd party app to fill that void also, which would be neat. I’m really pleased about the worldwide launch – this is more the iPhone launch version I was expecting, rather than what happened last year. I’m loving the little Aqua country flags on the site. It’s gone a long way towards assuaging my feelings of unease about the original device.
Vodafone NZ is promising data plans to go along with their iPhone launch and so maybe then they’ll stop gouging us for mobile bandwidth. I think that’s about the only thing that would get me off my current Prepay phone plan – the now defunct Motormouth Prepay plan. Supa Prepay does nothing for me personally, and I don’t use my phone enough to warrant a plan. But a good enough data plan may change that. Who knows. I guess it’s time to wait and see, we’ve got a month till the July 11th release anyway.
Comments(0) I’ve been waiting to get some accurate numbers and information on this before posting about this, and it looks like the final toll is 7 dead, 10 injured – 6 men and 1 woman, ranging in age from 19 to 74.
To sum it up, 25 year old man Tomohiro Kato rented a 2 ton truck from Shizuoka and drove it 150km to Tokyo and into a crowd of people in Akihabara. He then got out of the car and started stabbing people at random with a survival knife. The police showed up, overpowered him and took him away while ambulances showed up and took the wounded to various hospitals.
He claimed to have been acting alone and there were initially reports of him being a gang member, but those claims appear to be false. The reasons given for his rampage were “I was tired of life” and “I wanted to kill anyone” (in the sense of “I wanted to kill people and had no particular target in mind” rather than “I wanted to kill everyone”).
The Akihabara area is of course plenty busy on Sundays with shoppers buying up on games, computer gear, anime/manga merchandise, porn etc. and the station itself (where the murderer was allegedly heading towards) is a reasonable sized transportation hub linking something like 4 above ground train lines and 2 subway lines. That coupled with the Sunday tradition of closing the main street to form a pedestrian mall meant that there would be plenty of foot traffic to target. Though I suspect that tradition is going to come to an end very shortly. Which is a shame, given that I keep meaning to go and always wind up in Harajuku on Sundays instead. But I digress.
Interestingly there’s also this piece of news on the NHK site – Advance notice of murder found in website – that posts were found on “a bulletin board” warning of the attack. It doesn’t specify what board and the only outlet reporting this is NHK so it’s a bit dodgy (then again, it’s from this morning’s news a few hours ago), but it’s an indication that this may go a bit deeper. The coming days will tell, I suppose, I don’t really want to speculate too much.
There’s a fairly in depth article on The Guardian, if you want to know more/my summary was crappy. I wouldn’t trust CNN on this – they’re using the same AP article as Fox News with an equally sensationalistic headline (”Man on ‘murder mission’ stabs 17 in Tokyo” and “Man Plows Into Crowd, Goes On Stabbing Rampage; 7 Reported Dead” respectively). I wonder when they turned into such a piece of shit. Though their T shirt scheme cracks me up. I alternate between thinking it’s a terrible idea and a brilliant one.
Via BBC, NHK, Kotaku (well, kind of), The Guardian and Yomiuri Online
Comments(0) I promise I won’t post every time he does a review, but seeing as I’m just playing it now, it’s nice timing. Click here to view the Zero Punctuation review of Oblivion. If you haven’t seen his reviews before, they’re worth it.
He picks up on most of the bad things, though I haven’t noticed the landscapes so much because I’ve been hanging around in a reasonably small area. I don’t mind the lack of immersion too much, because I like the slightly artificial “I’m off to play a fantasy RPG full of numbers and hit points and goblins and so on” feel.
Though I’m having a rather unique problem in that I’m playing a North American PS3 version on a Japanese PS3. I hit [X] to talk to a character, then I have to hit [O] pick a menu item to say, because if I hit [X] again I exit out of the menu. Basically at times it’s [X] to use/talk/pick up and other times it’s [O] and it makes for a bit of a mess, though I guess it’s kind of my fault.
And yeah, the NPC voices do drive me a bit nutty at times.
This is just an amusing mistake:
Comments(0) So we’ve had another few updates on the Armageddon Expo site. And remember that last entry when I said this?
We’ll probably get a Naruto guest to round things out *sigh*
No, didn’t think so, that’s why I included it. Turns out the American voice of Kakashi, Dave Wittenberg, has been confirmed for the October event. Also Grey Delisle, aka Mandy of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. Useful since Richard Horvitz, the voice of Billy (and Zim and so on), came over last year.
So my only purpose in posting this was to prove myself right. Mind you, it’s a hollow victory, given the size of the Naruto cast compared to the size of the pool of American voice actors.
Demo for Civilization Revolution coming out on PSN tomorrow. Only on the US PSN, but a PAL gamer should already have at least 2 PSN accounts anyway. Time to see whether it sucks or not!
Lastly, Red PS2 and Blue PSP for Japan. I want both, which is ridiculous because I only want them for the pretty colours. Such pretty colours.
Via Armageddon Official Site, Eurogamer and Kotaku
Comments(0) 
Well ok, there never was a Nintendo New Zealand technically – instead, there is a company that distributes their product locally under licence. Or rather, was a company. See, it turns out Softprint Interactive who used to do this (and Activision and also Logitech and a whole raft of other brand names) has gone under, with no replacements yet in sight. Which means no Wii Fit and no Super Smash Bros Brawl in New Zealand for the foreseeable future.
Most people would consider this bad news, but then, I’ve never really been a big fan of Nintendo. So much so that I’m currently doing the Sony fangirl jig of delight.
This isn’t the first time Nintendo distribution has failed epically in New Zealand, of course. The previous distributor Monaco threw in the towel right before the release of the Wii, which I think left things up in the air for us a bit back then (hey, I didn’t really want a Wii so I wasn’t following the news too carefully). And even when distribution has been functional, Nintendo consoles and handhelds haven’t been hugely popular – the DS was being beaten by the PSP fairly regularly even back when the rest of the world had written the PSP off, the N64 did poorly and so on and so forth back through all the generations. So really, it’s just another chapter in a book of failure.
Anyway, recommence jig of schadenfreude!
Comments(0) I want a Totoro shaped cream puff so bad right now.
Apparently what appears to be a Ghibli licensed patisserie, making nothing but Totoro shaped cream puffs, has showed up in suburban Tokyo. This image is making me hungry. The details, in case anyone who reads this is anywhere near Tokyo:
3-21-21 Takaido Higashi, Suginami-ku, Tokyo, and the map shows it as close to the Takaido station off the Keio Inokashira line. The hours are 11am-7pm with Wednesdays off. Website: http://www.shiro-hige.com
Of course, I’m far more likely to end up there than at Patisserie Swallowtail. Even if… mmm, delicious…
Except, goddamn, now I’m craving omu-rice. With something cute drawn on the top in tomato sauce, or something. Which of course any self-respecting maid cafe in Japan, or even less self-respecting places outside of Japan would do.
Of course, there’s other novelty cafe options in Tokyo. I don’t exactly make a habit of trying them all (maybe I should?) because so many of them are temporary affairs, but there’s always this place:
The menu is… a bit odd. There’s a disconcertingly large amount of pasta on there, and there was also a photo of a burger containing kiwifruit. And to top it all off, there’s an Outback Steakhouse next door *shakes fist*
The address, in case you’re interested, is 6-1-3 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo. It’s fairly close to Roppongi station on both the Oedo line and Hibiya line, and there’s more info on the site if you need it.
Probably my favourite of the places is Jackson Hole from the live action film, anime and manga franchise NANA. It technically doesn’t count as a novelty food place, given the bar existed before the manga, but it’s still nice because the entire place is exactly as it appears in the show. And of course there’s the Jackson Burgers, which are kind of small and kind of expensive, but oh so tasty.
Unfortunately, they closed their original store at the end of March this year and moved, and I can’t find their new address. It’s on the north side Chofu station on the Keio line (changing at Shinjuku is the easiest way to go) in Tokyo though, as opposed to the south side where it was previously. I don’t know if they’ll keep the decor or anything, but no doubt they’ll still have the burgers.
Via Nausicaa.net and Yahoo News
Comments(0) Not much new to report on the gaming front, seeing as I’ve been busy doing lots of real life stuff. Study is being a bitch.
It also makes sense when you know that I’ve started playing Oblivion, which is a huge time sink. It’s been a lot of fun in the sense that I’ve been missing playing a generally well thought out open ended RPG for a fair while. I’ve been puttering along with my usual talky tank RPG character (Strength, Speech, Stamina and some kind of healing spell, with heavy armour and a large pointy weapon is the way to go for me. None of this magic bullshit) and doing a number of quests and for the most part it’s been fun. Raising some of the skills has been a pain while for others it’s too easy.
Most of the quests have been pretty good difficulty-wise, though I’m currently trapped in a quest which is kind of hard, which sucks.
Most of the NPC interaction is ok except there have been a few weird points – for example I broke into one guy’s house in the middle of the night thinking it was empty. He was home, told me to “Take your time” and to “Take care”, instead of shouting for the guards like most of the NPCs do. I broke into his basement only to find a room dedicated to demon worship complete with bones and skulls and blood, went back upstairs fully expecting to be attacked and instead he was still polite to me. So I left.
Graphics are pretty in parts and horribly ugly in other parts – mostly the landscapes and stuff look nice from a distance (I particularly like the sky). On the other hand, the people are generally pretty weird looking. I made a female character like I usually do, and it walks and sits and stands like a man (mind you, I was attacked by a bear that moved like a man, so comparatively I suppose it’s not too bad). Luckily you don’t see any of this because it’s in first person, but that in itself makes me rather uneasy as I generally don’t play games in first person. Like Bioshock coming out for PS3 soon. On one hand I like the concept and so on, but the idea of actually playing it doesn’t really appeal to me.
I’m strangely excited about the upcoming Civilization Revolution. The brightly coloured screencaps are a bit reminiscent of Ikariam (well, I guess it’s the other way round really), and I’m really digging that style. Plus I’m really beginning to feel the limits of Ikariam as a game, so I’m just in the mood for something a bit meatier. And the idea of going back to the older Civilization games seems like too much effort. So I’m looking forward to it.
Aaand I’ve run out of things to say. That’s it for now.
Comments(0) The May Sumo tournament has come and gone and as tournaments go, it was an interesting one. It was won by Bulgarian ozeki Kotooshu, who became the first ever European sumo wrestler to win one of the major tournaments, winning 13 out of his 14 matches, 12 of those being consecutive. He also managed to beat the two highest ranking wrestlers in the tournament, the yokozuna Asashoryu and Hakuho. This is epecially surprising given his form was going downhill for a while and he’d been written off as a prospect. Video highlights of his matches (he’s the tall one):
Of course, the other big news of the tournament was this match-up, between the two yokozuna Asashoryu and Hakuho below:
It may not seem like much. But watch it again. Hakuho (the one on the right with the brown mawashi [belt]) had lost at the point where his hands touched the floor of the arena, however notice the extra push that Asashoryu gives him. Then Hakuho gets up, gives him a shoulder barge and they glare at each other.
Living in a land where the national sport is rugby, the fact that the above scene caused a great deal of controversy seems odd. But this is Japan and the sport of sumo isn’t just the national sport, it still has all sorts of ceremonial religious overtones and to certain people, it’s very tied into the national identity. So the only two wrestlers of the highest rank acting in a dishonourable manner sent people into a tizzy and prompted phone calls and letter writing and all that sort of thing. Unfortunately there’s a nasty edge to it – there are racial undertones, given that Hakuho and Asashoryu are both Mongolian wrestlers and there’s some amount of discomfort at the perceived foreign dominance of the sport. Lots of old people watch sumo wrestling, you see. And of course in addition, there are people wondering if promoting Kotooshu to yokozuna will be good or bad for the sport.
So they’re all heading off to Los Angeles next week. It’s not an official tournament or anything, but it will be interesting to see whether Kotooshu can keep up his current form. And I guess getting away from the media frenzy surrounding the Asashoryu/Hakuho thing in Japan will do everyone some good.
Final bit of sumo news. Kotooshu has begun a blog. It’s almost entirely in hiragana, so it should be readable with very basic Japanese knowledge. I know how much of a pain this whole blogging business is, so I don’t know if he’ll be able to maintain it, but if he does it should be a fun read.