Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion

WOW! That's about all I can say about Code Geass. I've been meaning to watch this one for quite some time and have just been putting it off and now I'm wondering what the hell took me so long. Lelouch is quite possibly the greatest hero and anithero of any show I've ever watched and not just anime.

This anime's main story line revolves around Lelouch Lamperouge or Lelouch Vi Britannia a prince of the Holy Britannian Empire the major world power. Lelouch and his sister Nunnally are in hiding at the Ashford Academy the school which Lelouch attends because both his and Naunnally's mother was murdered under mysterious circumstances and Lelouch and Nunnally are presumed dead. The action starts when returning from a chess match against a Noble of Britannia Lelouch accidentally involves himself in a struggle between the Japanese resistance (Japan has been subjugated by Britannia and renamed Area 11) and the Britannian government. In the struggle Lelouch gains a mysterious power known as Geass which allows him to command anyone to obey a single order unconditionally until that order has been fulfilled. During this first decisive battle Lelouch takes control of the Japanse resistance and leads them into a near victory. Unbeknownst to Lelouch the Britannian Empire sends Suzaku Kururugi (Lelouch's dearest friend) into battle with a new and unique Knightmare mech which Suzaku uses to effectively squash the uprising. Lelouch later discovers that one of the resistance fighters is also one of his class mates Kallen Stadtfeld she later becomes his ace pilot when Lelouch establishes a new resistance group known as the Black Knights and lead by Lelouch in disguise under the name Zero. That's just the first series which is 25 episodes. In the second series Lelouch and the Black Knights establish their own country and name it the United States of Japan and join together with the other major world power the Chinese Federation forming a pseudo country of approximate size and power to Britannia with the Black Knights as the military force for the "country."

Now it may seem like I went into a lot of detail about the plot but that barely scratches the surface there's countless intrigue and romance, death and betrayal and under it all each individuals drive to fight for justice and end the war mongering of the world. Lelouch is one of the most interesting characters because he has to lead a double maybe even triple life to accomplish his goals. He is a true renaissance man. He's an excellent leader and strategist, a great friend and is willing to accept the role of the true bastard to unify the world. He expertly creates an undying symbol for Justice in Zero and does his best to protect innocent lives. However when he needs to Zero is not above making sacrifices for the greater good. Throughout the entire series there's always that lingering question in your mind is he the good guy or is he just a selfish bastard. I'll leave that to you to decide however I think that Lelouch executes his plans for world peace nearly flawlessly despite the loss of many of his friends and occasionally what he believes was his whole reason for fighting. On the other side of this coin there is Suzaku who believes that no life should be sacrificed unless it's unavoidable and that people should work within the system to instigate change. Suzaku is an interesting character because he is an 11 (Japanese) an "honorary Britannian" and also the son of the last prime minister of Japan the one who allegedly took his own life to get the Japanese people to surrender to Britannia. Suzaku is deeply troubled because he is a soldier that is rapidly ascending through the ranks of the Britannia military and trying to maintain his beliefs that every life sacred. He is also old friends with Lelouch and Nannually and on several occasions nearly succeeds in discovering Lelouch's identity as Zero whom he regards as the absolute epitome of evil. It is interesting to watch their friendship grow and change since neither knows the others true identities Lelouch the "Black King" of the Black Knights, and Suzaku the "White Knight" of Britannia.

I would definitely give this a big recommendation. I've barely scratched the surface of this show but if I were to do a longer review it would probably turn into an in depth analysis of good and evil and all that bull shit and I don't want to get preachy. So long story short if you listen to nothing else I have to say listen to this. Watch this anime it's fucking awesome also if you've got the time check out Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood and Gurren Lagan. Which I may not get around to reviewing for awhile because I've got so much good stuff to watch that its hard to go back and rewatch them by myself. That does not change the fact that they are brilliant and so is Code Geass.

Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion

I'm not going to lie, I played this because I can't wait for Skyrim. It's an everyday obsession of mine. I'm counting down the days and cursing the God who didn't invent time travel. I've considered freezing myself like Cartman or accidentally raising a demon who possesses and kills all of my friends, forcing me to open a portal back to the Middle Ages and then fight a horde of skeletons and take a potion that sends me forward in time, but I'll drink a little too much and go too far ahead to a point when Skyrim has finally, FINALLY debuted. I really want the game is what I'm saying, and Oblivion is a good band-aid until I can get my grubby hands on a copy.

Oblivion was a launch title when the Xbox 360 debuted all the way back in 2005. Six years is a long time for a video game, and yet it still looks fantastic. Yes, there's pop in, the character models are all ugly as sin and a lot of the environments look similar, but it was made back when Halo 2 was a wildly popular and attractive-looking game. It ushered in that new generation with style, and still looks good. Normally I don't talk about graphics because normally I don't care. Of course you need to be able to see what is going on in the game, but beyond that it isn't really that important. There's the surface aesthetic value, which is very nice but it wears off. You may be entranced by a game's brilliant graphics for the first hour, but the six after that degrade the "wow" factor somewhat. Oblivion and game like Oblivion are an exception, however, because the aesthetic is necessary to the game play.

When you think of game play in Oblivion, you probably think of the swordplay or the magic or the speechcraft system that doesn't work very well. All of that is actually a very minor part of the game play. Oblivion's main driving game play is walking, or more specifically exploring. It's about discovering places and looting them. It's about sinking into this world and learning every nook and cranny. It's this weird repetitive cycle where you go to caves to level up and find loot so that you can kill bigger things in different caves. This is the core game play of the open-world RPG (as well as most MMO's) and its so much fun.

I love exploration and it's handled so beautifully here. There are so many places to go and so many things to see. There's a guy named Goblin Jim and he lives in a cave with a bunch of goblins. Why? If there's an answer, I never found it. You get quests out of the blue just because you happened to wander into an invisible town or you talked to a guy who's having trouble catching fish. Now, the freedom isn't what makes this intoxicating, but the accomplishment. You are doing things in the world. There's a main story about demons breaking out of Hell (I'm sorry, daedra breaking out of Oblivion,) but no one I've talked to cares. This is not a game driven by narrative, it's a game driven by the environment. It's a game driven by mystery. There are small narratives and one big narrative, sure, but you can ignore those and search every cave, like I did, for the best sword around. This isn't Hamlet on the Holodeck, but that doesn't mean that it is without feeling and meaning. I was actually quite moved the first time I played Oblivion. I was just walking along a river near the city of Leyawin and I ran into a cottage. The moon was big and it was all really beautiful. This game is about exploration. It's about getting outside and finding things. Every time I play it I want to walk across the country and possibly kill a wolf.

In terms of nitty-gritty mechanics, I love that using whatever your skill is actually raises that skill. For example, using a sword makes you better at using a sword. They make you choose major and minor skills at the beginning. Major skills get a boost and raise your overall level as they develop which in turn raises our stats. It's all very roundabout and I'm glad they're getting rid of it in Skyrim. The animations look silly now, but that's unfair. I don't like that the difficulty of the enemies gets higher as you level. It's frustrating because part of the fun of leveling your character is becoming this unstoppable badass that can fell a goblin in a single blow. Player characters in RPG's are tied more to the player than in any other genre, which is why you want them to feel powerful. Who cares if it make the game a little unbalanced? I'm not saying there shouldn't be difficult enemies in the game, but I should be able to kill a goblin with one swing once I get to a high enough level. These are minor gripes in a game that really holds up after all of this time.

I've heard people complaining about Skyrim, which I haven't mentioned is the next game in the series, but I hope I don't have to. The main complaint is that its the same thing that Bethesda has been doing forever. I understand the whining, but at the same time I just don't care. I agree that the game industry has been a little stale in terms of innovating in their triple-A titles, but we still have tons of indie games being made. Even if they weren't, though, the Elder Scrolls series is not the issue. These are games which have game play actually benefits from better graphics and larger disc space. These are worlds to be explored and immersed in, and worlds have all sorts of polygons. So let's ease off of Bethesda and their beautiful worlds and put a little more pressure on the faceless Marines shooting at the color brown.

100th POST

Well we made it 100 posts of me blabbing on about shit people don't care about, But you know what I'm plan on doing another 100 or 2
so you the reader can just sit back and enjoy this 100th post with the knowledge that hundreds more are on there way>:D
for my 100th post i uploaded a bunch of songs me and the chaps made way back in the hay day of us all not getting laid ... I hope you enjoy them as much as i do... but probably not

"Next im coming to your home town, I piss on your shit then burn it to the ground !!!" ahhh what good times


I heard that Ebert said that this was a "GREAT" club song... I think he knows about that stuff


A warm pianoy song about the Big man in red,mmm so soulful (mad props to erik 4 holding on to this and his piano skillz )

Well this is _Dom saying I'll see you at dose 101

:D hope youve had fun reading

Treat

Simmon and lewis in america 

Gears of War

I know I'm late with this post. I could give you all of the reasons why (school, friends, copious amounts of drugs, ect.) but anyone who reads this is more than likely one of the people who partook in whatever I was doing so congratulations on gumming up the works guys.

Gears of War is one of the most influential shooters of all time. It was a selling point for the Xbox 360 and introduced gameplay mechanics still very much in-vogue. One need only look at the regenerating health as well as a lack of any health bar in the HUD present in nearly every modern shooter to see its influence. However, the game is not without problems, some of which are glaringly obvious from the get-go. However, the game is also useful in a discussion about how meaning and feeling can be conveyed through gameplay.

The story is unoriginal, to put it bluntly. Its about a bunch of steroid-pumped space marines doing what steroid-pumped space marines do; shoot metaphors for enemies of the US. Yes The Locust, which is what the alien horde calls itself in this game, are obvious stand-ins for terrorists. They pop up wherever they want and the government can't stop them. They're zealots fighting because an authority orders them to. Hell, they even travel through the sand and there's mention of emulsion, which seems to be something like oil. I don't think I have to mention that when the average American thinks of terrorists, they think of the Middle East and two things the Middle East has a lot of is sand and oil. I shouldn't expect subtlety from a developer named Epic and a game called Gears of War, I know (also, the soldiers are called COGs. Get it? They're COGs in the GEARS of WAR!!).Anyway, big Americans shoot brown people facsimiles is the basic plot of the game.

The main characters in this space marine saga are Marcus Fenix (player character), Dom (second-player), Cole and Baird. They don't go very far beyond their roles as tough guys, usually having lines like, "Over there," and "Got him!." Grunts and shouts are the order of the day, but that doesn't mean that there isn't some room for charm. I can't deny that I love Cole Train, the big African-American guy, despite I also recognize that his only character trait is being the big African-American guy. Dom's character gets some development (he's searching for his wife) that works slightly better in the second game than this one, even though its very manipulative. On the other hand, Baird's one character trait is that he's a dick and I'm pretty sure that Marcus Fenix was voiced by the Kool-Aid Man. Actually, it was John DiMaggio, who you may know as Bender from Futurama, doing my least favorite voice in his repertoire. I'm not kidding about the Kool-Aid Man thing, by the way. Fenix even says, "Oh yeah," sometimes. It's extremely distracting.

The story isn't the draw, though, it's the game play. You don't play a game called Gears of War to think. However, game play is, strangely, where Gears of War becomes the most interesting in an academic way. Most shooters, especially before Gears, have a tendency to feature a nearly invincible protagonist mowing down countless, faceless enemies. In a lot of ways, this game keeps that tradition alive in the mowing down countless, faceless enemies sense. However, you don't feel invincible while playing the game. Epic uses a cover system that was revolutionary for its time. Even on the lowest difficulty setting, if you sprint around with Marcus and try to hack up everyone with the chainsaw-bayonet (yes, there's a chainsaw bayonet), you're going to die. Marcus can't take bullets of that magnitude. This cover system fundamentally alters how the gamer experiences the game and what the game is about. Now you aren't firing an endless stream of bullets, but your jockeying for the best cover positions. They also introduced the active reload which makes it so that, if you hit the reload button at the right time, you reload faster or if you're really good a boost to damage. Now reloading becomes a major factor. By placing less emphasis on the shooting and more on movement and reloads, Epic creates a feeling of fear. It can be scary, especially in the later levels when explosive arrows can kill you in one hit if you're too cocky. While the game is still dripping in testosterone, there's actually a hint of melancholy to the proceedings rather than an all-out dick sword fight.

Is Gears of War perfect? No. Not even close. The dialogue is terrible and all of the characters are as flat as cardboard. I also wasn't impressed with the boring brown colors and the equally uninteresting story line. However, what makes this game interesting and important is how it engages game play. It uses the cover system and the active reloads to create a panicky, somewhat depressing atmosphere that the story should have played up more. The ultimate problem with the game is that they couldn't decide if they wanted to make a manly shooter or a slightly more thoughtful game about how scary it must be to be entrenched in a land that is not your own, under fire from a people you don't understand. They tried to make both.

Quickish hit

Some really great music put to 20 minutes of the best cosplay, you'll see this side of the pacific ... if you've got 20 minutes to burn give it a look

_Dom
(J-treat)