As an avid MMOGer, I have to report this. Mabinogi, a Korean game popular in Korea, Japan, Taiwan and China, is apparently releasing an English version soon (the Korean website reports "late 2007"). I'm looking forward to it. Mabinogi has some very interesting features that I've been looking for in games, especially what Micko calls "mundane" activities, such as farming and tailoring.

Though I don't know much else about the game other than that it has an interesting battle system (which can be turned off, but I'll try it at least), I'm still looking forward to it greatly.

Well I finally got my hands on a Madden game, and it's the latest one at that. As far as I know, Madden is the best in the NFL video game business, and has been since the old days of 16-bit graphics. So I was pretty excited about getting this game.

And with good reason. Almost everything is done so well. Graphics are nice, plays are pretty good, and when you're playing you really have to pay attention to the smallest things, which makes American football the great game that it is (unlike in some other games where you only have to pay attention to whoever has the ball). You get points for being a good blocker, or if you're on defense, even putting pressure on the quarterback even if you don't get a sack or anything. That's awesome because it makes you really feel the gravity of all your hard work fighting through the offensive linesmen so you could put a hand in that quarterback's face or make him pass just a split second earlier than he wanted to. These things are priceless in real games, but you never really felt it much in video games, until now.

I only have two major things that I didn't like too much about it and that's it. My first complaint is that, considering it's John Madden, he's not very talkative at all. What he does have is a lot of repetitive lines, especially if the same things happen over and over. And honestly, in a football game you probably want to stick with like 8-10 plays on offense and only a few kinds of plays on defense, like 2 plays for each type of cover/blitz, so that means Madden says the same things a lot. I was actually expecting to hear more exciting commentary, even if it's just the trademarked Madden pointing-out-obvious-stuff. Additionally there are long stretches at times when he doesn't say anything at all. It feels empty really.

The other concern I have is that the game didn't translate too well into keyboard/keyboard+mouse control. The game probably plays extremely well when using controllers (especially PS2 style, with the non-analog sticks and stuff). But when you're using a keyboard+mouse set-up, for example, there are some things you just can't do. For example, I couldn't figure out for the life of me how to perform a juke move in keyboard/keyboard+mouse control. If you're using a controller with a stick, you simply flick the stick to the direction and that's it. When you're using keyboard+mouse, it's supposed to be hold left mouse button + move it left, but nothing happens. I feel like I need to buy a controller now, as a result.

Otherwise it's an awesome game. Lots of fun modes including setting up situations, for practice etc.

My rating: 90/100 (one of the best sports games I've ever played)

Asda Story is up with its open beta testing phase, and I've had the privilege of getting to play for several hours on two different classes. So I'll be writing a mini-review on it in this post. Also, I got to try Fiesta Story a few days ago as well, and they're also in beta testing phase. I'll discuss it very shortly later on.

Despite some initial bugs with the launcher/patcher window and server channel selection (both now fixed with a patch last night), the game seems to run smoothly. Even the server is pretty good. I haven't seen the channels being completely full yet, though. Americans are complaining about lag, but I don't notice it at all. I don't know where the server is situated (probably Korea, dunno).

Anyway the game's graphics are cute. Bright colors and a lovely design. Music is pretty nice, too, except that their bgms are so short that you really notice their looping. But the sounds aren't very good (yet?). They have some of the worst weapon swing/hit sounds I've ever heard in any MMORPG.

Attack speeds are fast by default, which makes the weapon swing/hit sounds even more annoying. You don't feel any impact at all as you attack or when you get hit, (except with some skills, that really look like they shake the enemies up). So you really have to pay attention to the numbers/miss messages popping out of you or the enemy to see if you any damage is being exchanged. I guess better sound effects could've helped cured this problem.

Their quest design is very good, though. Having small level-specific maps helps much with this, and after you're done with all the quests for the map, you're probably overlevelled for the place by then, and so you get to move on to the next map. For the duration of your stay in the map, which isn't very big, they send you to NPCs that are located near or on the way to other NPCs that might give you more quests. And the quests usually have targets in similar areas, so you could grab all your quests from town, go to the quest target location, do all of them, then go back to town, usually levelling you up so that you can get more quests and repeat the cycle. Because the system is so good, questing never seems tedious, and is definitely faster than just regular grinding.

Skill system is awesome too. There are three classes to choose from, with three specializations per class. Warriors can use 1h sword + shield, 2h sword or spears, archers can use bows, crossbows or "ballista", which look like big machine guns or hand cannons, and mages get 3 elements (or more, I never tried them). As you level up with a particular class, you get skill points that you can distribute any way you want among any specialization for your class. You can put them purely into your own specialization, but it's probably a good idea to get some of the most useful skills that can be used with any weapon. For example, there are ballista skills that can be used even if you're using a crossbow. In fact, there's a ballista passive skill that increases the damage of your crossbow-specific nuke attack by 50%. The only question is your timing for getting each skill.

Sowel system is a success. This system allows you to wear whatever you want, while your equipment's defense and attack powers are determined by the sowels you put into them. This being said, I wish the equipment you start off with had sockets for the sowels, so you're not forced to have to find one from monsters or buy one from players or NPCs.

Soulmate system is pretty new and I can't post much on it yet. To test it, I had two of my characters become soulmates of each other, so I naturally can't play with them both at the same time. I was mistaken about my original assumption that you can have soulmates following you around like pets when they're not logged on. What it really does is that you can log in as your soulmate to level it up for them while they're offline. You just can't edit anything like their equipment or their skills. But they'll be getting the exp. I'll post more info as I get more soulmate levels.

All in all, it's a cute game so far. Although it's almost pure hack & slash with nothing else to do, a few bugs, poor sounds, etc., it's still fun. It's worth playing at least now and then, if you can find time to get on at the same time with your soulmate particularly.

I give it a score of: 72/100


Fiesta Online, on the other hand, was far too laggy to get to test properly. It's too bad, because it had wonderful graphics and very nice BGM and sounds. The BGM made me feel like how I did when I was just starting to play RO several years ago. Because of the lag, I couldn't stand staying, so I didn't continue.

Somebody on 4chan made this wonderful poster with updates on SaiMoe 2007. Just click to enlarge, because it's pretty big if it weren't thumbnailed.

Much to my shame, the only pair I don't know about is the match-up in D block. Thusly, I have my votes listed up as follows:

A: Nagi
B: Konata
C: Vita
D: ??? (will probably vote for Yuno, since I'm told she's really moe)
E: Ayumu
F: Tsukasa
G: Sayuri
H: Suigintou

First match starts on Tuesday. Please vote responsibly. D:

P.S.: To clarify, I don't visit 4chan regularly, but my friend does, and he gave me the link to that image.

I started playing a fun guitar-based rhythm game called Frets on Fire. It's designed to be played by picking up your keyboard (like a guitar). Ideally you'll want to press the Function keys (F1-F5 by default, but I changed it so I press F5-F9 instead), and hit a pick key (Enter/Shift by default, but I changed it to the numpad 0 and numpad 7).

The game only starts out with three songs, but you can download a lot of songs on various fan sites, or make some yourself. It's a lot of fun, and it's a good excuse to listen to some of the classics of guitar history, such as Sweet Child of Mine, which is my current LSS. I'm also looking for more Deep Purple songs.

Currently on-going is the 2007 SaiMoe Tournament. For those who have never heard of it, it's a tournament that pits "moe" characters (simply put, pretty female characters, though the Japanese dictionary refers to it as somebody you can be infatuated with) from various current and recent anime against each other in a battle of popularity. The battle is decided by votes from fans. It's a serious tournament with very strict rules. Anime moe = serious business. D:

Anyway the latest results as of right now pits Shana from Shakugan no Shana against Sanzen'in Nagi from Hayate no Gotoku, in the finals for the A block (there are 8 blocks, A-H). Ironically, both are voiced by the same actress. I was afraid this match-up would come, when I saw Nagi in the list of semi-finalists on the right side of A block. I personally like Nagi. She's one of my favorite characters in Hayate no Gotoku. She's my favorite female character (so far) anyway. Though I'm worried that she might lose because a lot of people certainly like Shana, as Shana has her own following. I've never heard of Nagi fanboys, like a Nagi imageboard or something, while Shana has a few. But I guess we'll leave it up to the voters. :D

Another current match-up that has not yet been decided is Eruruu (Utawarerumono) versus Sayuri (Kanon), which is also a tough battle. Meanwhile Kagami from Lucky Star lost to Rena from Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni in D block, while Konata, also of Lucky Star, defeated Isumi of Hayate no Gotoku to move on to the finals in B block.

Hayate no Gotoku has just entered the second half of the series. This includes a new opening and ending theme, a couple of new characters, and an introduction into a new flow of the story.

There's a couple of new games I'm looking forward to. One is Asda Online (sounds like a gibberish name you type when you can't think of anything o_o), and the other is TwelveSKY Online.

TwelveSKY Online began operation supposedly on October 1st. They boast of its being a martial arts game, where you have different martial arts from various Asian cultures. But the website isn't complete yet, and there isn't much information regarding just how good this system would be. I'm thinking it might end up being something like Hero Online, based on the class system, where you can choose any of the three weapons per class, and your stance and skills is based on your weapon. While I didn't like Hero's system too much because it forced you into cookie-cutter skill builds, one thing that could make this system interesting is freedom of choosing what skills to get. So even if a lot of people have the same class and weapon, their choice of what skills they picked would provide for variety, and still make the game interesting.

I'll wait for more information to be posted on the website before downloading and trying this game. If it's just like Hero, there's no reason to play it, really.


Meanwhile, Asda Online, set to begin international operation in mid-October, sounds like a perfectly interesting game. The key feature that really caught my attention is what they call a Sowel system. The Sowel is short for "Sword" and "Jewel". It's not very clever, but the name isn't as important as what it does. The Sowel system basically allows you to wear anything you want. At character creation, you're immediately given an option to customize even your clothing. From my understanding, the Sowels are what you use to strengthen and upgrade your equipment. Every equippable item has 4 slots for Sowels, and you can attach and detach them whenever you want. So if you have a dagger that you want to have high damage, put in your 4 damage Sowels. If you suddenly decide you want to use the same dagger to help you cast more powerful magic, put in your magic attack Sowels. It's pretty interesting, because it means you really can wear whatever you want. Any armor, any weapon. And from the looks of things, you can play any class at any time. Just that advancing in skill points at a particular class will be harder if you keep switching.

I'm really looking forward to Asda Online. It looks like a game where you can just run around and cut monsters down, and have fun dressing your character up heheh.

Well it's been several months (about 10 I think) since I started playing Space Cowboy Online. It's not a terribly long time, when you think about it, especially since I had several weeks of break sometime around July/August. But I finally got tired of the game.

To be honest, it's not even the game itself that got to me. Sure it was a slow grind game, but the wars were fun, and blasting things out of the sky was also fun. I was having a problem with the entire gaming experience, though, including, but not limited to, relationships with the community, as I explain in detail in this thread on the SCO forums.

So I guess this is goodbye to SCO. If I ever come back, it'll be in a long time. But I'm hoping I don't ever get the urge to come back. I didn't have the time for such a grind game anyway.

Do you remember the day when Megumi Hayashibara was in like every popular anime? She was possibly the most popular seiyuu in the late 80's and throughout the 90's. I just suddenly thought about it that I don't hear her name as much as I used to like 10 years ago, just as my playlist passed by Successful Mission, a song she sung for the soundtrack of Saber Marionette J. It's very nostalgic. Very oldschool, and dare I say, timeless. She was so popular to me in the 90's that I can't even think of any other seiyuu's name right now off the top of my head of a similar status.

Megumi Hayashibara still works as a seiyuu. She's in some anime here and there, and sings songs here and there. But not in any of the super popular ones (save for the Evangelion 2007 remake).

So who's the new Megumi Hayashibara of this generation? There are a lot of new seiyuus, many of which are very popular, especially because of appearing in some of the top-rated anime. Some of the names that instantly come to mind of this generation are Aya Hirano, Rie Tanaka, and Rie Kugimiya. But I can't say any of them are as heavy an influence on anime as Megumi Hayashibara once was.

I dunno, I guess I just like to ramble about stuff like this because I'm old enough to remember the late 80's and early 90's, and a lot of the titles that came out and became popular at that time. o_o Yay age.