Category: Ongoing Investigations

Ongoing Investigations: Case #073

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On the advice of Sheentaku I decided to give  Baka to Test to Shokanju a chance since he said it seemed right up my alley.  I can’t say that the Internet has utterly figured me out just yet. The premise is that after students take the entrance exam for Fumizuki Academy the score get get places them in classes A though F. The lower the class your are in the worse the facilitates are with the A class having the newest fanciest of everything and the F class has everything that is about to collapse. The classes can use an RPG battle system to defeat other classes and switch rooms with them. So the F class declares war on the rest of the school with the two main characters being their trump cards. Akihisa Yoshii, the main guy is a punching bag for Minami Shimada the tomboy is is clearly in love with him. Mizuki Himeji, the main girl is just sort of a genius Hyatt but not any more interesting than that. The trap, the pervert, and the rest of the school seemed standard character types. Yuuji Sakamoto looks like me might be interesting but I am sure they will under use him. Also Minami was way too violent for no reason for me to get into her character. I never disliked any part of the show unlike say The Familiar of Zero but it also never drew me in or made me laugh.

This past weekend with some friends in toe I went to the Tatsunoko VS. Capcom event being held at Nintendo World in NYC. Usually at these little gatherings you can get a copy of the game early, but not so this time around. Though you could win a copy by beating out everyone else in the game tournament. Of which there were tons, or atleast I think there were, maybe they were all just in line for the autograph and poster as seen above. In any case, talk about packed! Luckily we caught glimpses of the game as we were waiting in line. I am happy to report many people playing as Joe the Condor (as they should be!) who is basically the reason I want to play this game myself. Actually I was happy to see everyone really playing an array of the hefty cast. I did get to play for a minute at the end where I doubled up with Joe the Condor and Viewtiful Joe and promptly got trounced by Gold Lightan! Looking forward to this release so I can try again.

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Ongoing Investigations: Case #072

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Ah, Tachikoma, how I longed to have you for my own for so long. Okay, so he is a little far from having the real deal, but I’ll take what I can get. He is die-cast metal, I was a bit worried there would be a balance issue what with that huge back end, but no problem! The articulation in his legs is good and his feet and hands are fully poseable. As you can see his crouching position is quite nice. However, his arms don’t fair as well. If I try to give him a sort of excited yatta Tachi pose, they don’t really reach high enough and tend to pop off. But overall he is a good size and detailed making him one of the best I’ve seen avaliable. He also comes with software that allows his to say phrases and light-up and move a little. Though the CD is for Japanese PC only (which of course you can get around).

I recently got a copy of Stolen Hearts by Miku Sakamoto from CMX. Shinobu Okuma is a super short girl who accidentally spills milk all over an expensive kimono that the frightening Koguma brought to school with him. He shames her into working at his grandmother’s kimono shop where she slowly sees that he’s a sensitive guy and not the wannabe Yakuza everyone thinks he is. It is a cute story. I was a bit surprised that by the end of the first chapter Shinobu and Koguma are a couple. Part of me wonders if this was supposed to just be a one shot story that was popular enough to get turned into a series. The first chapter could so easily be self-contained. The characters are solid and entertaining. Everything works really well when Shinobu and Koguma are interacting. My main problem is the story tends to lean on shojo tropes too much and whenever it does so it is at its weakest. The story really shines when its characters are doing something a little outside the mold. It’s a fun read but it is not going to win over any new fans to the genre. I did find the teen rating on the back quite curious. This manga is super chaste. Maybe it gets racier down the line but so far the most anyone does is some hand holding. The only fan service is traditional Japanese clothing service.

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Ongoing Investigations: Case #071

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At some time in the past I used to have some amount of skillz, but no more. Nothing has proven this more than me playing the New Super Mario Bros. Wii. You can play it like a standard Mario game in which case it plays pretty much like every old school 2D Mario platformer. It really reminded me of Super Mario Bros. 3 quite a bit. The other way to play it is is multiplayer which just adds to the madness. The second you add another player on the screen the game changes completely. It makes many things in the game that were simple very hard and several hard tasks very simple. If you play the game with the right people it will add to the fun especially if you use the bubble trick during some scrolling parts and if you use the team ground pound. Also partners can make getting the coins so much easier. But if you play with some other people death by scrolling and “stolen” powerups can lead to some petty grudges. Our little group pretty well together. We beat the game proper without too much difficulty but having some very good players did not hurt. We still had to go back and get all the star coins but I think we had a great time.

Playing New Super Mario Brothers Wii with 4 players is the only way to roll, seriously. It is fun, it is insane, it is hysterical, and it is deadly! Biggest issue that we all had was when someone would get hit there would be a slight pause of delay which totally threw off your rhythm causing much mayhem and plenty of extra deaths. This was never more evident than in the hidden world in World 8 with the rollercoaster-like contraption. I also found the game to be the right mix of difficulty, which is certainly ramped up with multi-player. While I agree that is references Super Mario Bros. 3 a lot, I think it really took a ton for Super Mario World, possibly my favorite, and things from Mario 64 and even Super Mario Bros. 2 U.S. This game was a wonderful culmination of great pieces from each older game and I have faith that when they make a sequel, they had better make a sequel, that they will fix some of the annoyances and add even more fun stuff! I can’t recommend this game enough, it’s a gem, Mario’s still got it!

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