Archive for February, 2010

 

NXT Thoughts

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

So WWE’s NXT, their newest series, premiered this week. Of course I was going to watch it, but sometimes I have an opinion about things, and sometimes those opinions are made up of multiple words, so… Analysis ahoy.

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Final Fantasy XIII Log: Part 1

Friday, February 26th, 2010

There will be no spoilers here, so fear not. I was going to try to do a live-ish collection of thoughts and notes, but it didn’t take long for me to find myself too busy with it to keep stopping to type things. Instead, I’m just going to do a little summary of my experience thus far. I’m currently at a save point shortly after unlocking the “Crystarium” ability system.

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Final Fantasy XIII Preview

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

So I imported Final Fantasy XIII recently, and just received it the other day, but I haven’t had a chance to play it yet. As an experiment, I’m going to try doing some sort of “coverage” here of my playthrough of it. Unlike most people interested in this game, however, I completely skipped the PS2 generation. Unless you count the PC version of Final Fantasy XI, which I bought when it first came out in the US, and it was horrible back then. Otherwise, I’ve only played I-IX, so this will be my first game with voice acting, and my first game without Uematsu’s music. I don’t really know or care what the deal is with the main song, either. I just don’t like playing Final Fantasy games in English because I’m a bitter old lady.

But anyway, first, I’d like to talk about the version I got. I bought it because it was (and still is, as of this writing) on sale at PlayAsia for much less than its normal price. In fact, it’s less than what the US version costs. And that’s even with shipping factored in, if you pick a cheap option. But even though it’s in Japanese, it’s not exactly the version released in Japan. It’s a Japanese language version of the game released in countries like Hong Kong and Taiwan. But it is NTSC (supporting 480p, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p, according to the back cover), and everything from the manual to the game itself (I have checked that much) is Japanese only. There is one extra sheet that includes Chinese and English translations of the menus and controls, though. But otherwise, it’s almost identical to the Japanese version, content-wise. It just doesn’t have that code for Final Fantasy XIV, which I’m guessing one wouldn’t be able to use unless they had a Japanese residence anyway. So if you are interested in importing the game, this version seems just as good as the one from Japan. Though, I honestly don’t know which song is used, not having played it yet, aside from the opening video and options menu. But I’d assume it’s the Japanese song, since all the other audio is in Japanese.

Anyway, I took some pictures of the case and manual and stuff, for those who might be curious about it. And before you think it, turning the flash off would have made these look even worse. My camera sucks. But click them for full-size. (more…)

Let's More Blogging

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

Finally… the blog has come back to Rachel’s Page. That is, it’s on my own server now, so yay. And with purely my own layout that is (or will be, in most cases) used on the rest of the site. The parts of the site that do have this layout don’t have the new banner yet, though. It’s actually an update of an old “Use this to link here” banner I’d made partially as a joke back in 2001, which is why Chris Jericho has so much hair, and why it’s so tacky. But the picture of me is recent (the previous one was from 1998), and had major lighting issues that I couldn’t fix, which is why it’s grayscale’d. That, and I guess it helps keep me stealthy compared to the rest.

Anyway, blog, new/old location. I think I still have a few kinks to work out, but for the most part, I guess it’s finally ready for a public debut. I had a nice little run on Blogspot, but I’m a control freak, so it just wasn’t sufficient for me. But on that note, if you’re using the custom RSS feed I mentioned last month, you shouldn’t have any problems with the transition. If not, then I guess this might be the last post you ever see, unless you take note of this and go to the new URL.

I haven’t been able to do much thought spewing lately, partially because I was busy setting up all this, but I definitely do have plenty to spew. For one, I still have that Lunar Navy thing, as well as things to say about TaXatioN, Hulk vs Mindfreak, Esmeraude, and the 13th Warrior/Monk/Thief/Red Mage/White Mage/Black Mage. At least one of which you might see within the next few minutes, because I didn’t want to come empty-handed.

Attack of the Genetic Experiments

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

For whatever reason, Final Fantasy VII‘s main villain, Sephiroth, is extremely popular. But I recently came to the realization that his backstory closely resembles that of another very popular game character that came shortly before him: Mewtwo. From Pokemon Red and Green, of course.

Obviously, that’s referring to the Japanese release dates, since both games did originate there, after all. And in the case of Pokemon, I’m only referring to the in-game story, because the anime didn’t come until much later.

Oh, and obviously, there’s a lot of spoilers here, assuming there’s anyone left that doesn’t know these things and might actually care about that.

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So Much Drama in the W3C

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

For various reasons, I haven’t been able to do much writing for the past few days. (In fact, I really shouldn’t even be writing this.) But I have been doing a lot of reading.

I only recently learned about a big problem with XHTML — that it’s really just HTML pretending to be XHTML in most cases, including mine. Even though XHTML1 is virtually identical to HTML4 anyway, there’s no way I’m going backwards. It seems there aren’t really any particular technical disadvantages to using my fake XHTML, either. It works, and the W3C told me to do it, so why change?

Maybe because now there’s HTML5 to consider. (more…)

TV Thoughts: Finales, Premieres, and Evil Gases

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

Quick rambles about the series finale of Dollhouse, the season premiere of Lost, this week’s ECW, and last week’s episodes of Batman: The Brave and the Bold and Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Many spoilers are thrown about, but I’ve hidden them with ugly color codes, as usual.

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Dragon Ball Z, Minus Z, Plus Kai, Plus Z Again

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

FUNimation announcing they have Dragon Ball Kai is about as shocking as sitting in an underground rubber house during a lightning storm. But I don’t think anyone expected them to change the name, and I’m almost glad they did.

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Game Thoughts: WiiWare Demos

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Nintendo had released a few WiiWare demos on the Wii Shop a couple months ago, and I downloaded them back then, but only got around to playing them this past weekend. It seems the demos were finally taken down from the shop yesterday, so my timing is a bit awkward. But I’ll give a few mini-reviews on them anyway, because the actual games will obviously stick around.

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Royal Rumble Thoughts

Monday, February 1st, 2010

The start of the so-called “Road to WrestleMania” took place last night, so I thought I’d get out my opinions while they’re still relatively fresh (though I’m already forgetting details). Not going to bother with spoiler tags, because I’d have to block out pretty much everything in this case, so I’d advise against reading this now if you don’t want to know the results yet.

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