Petition to the White House

I made a petition on the white house we the people site about Data Caps. It’s an important issue and one that is largely ignored. Data Caps, despite what people want you to believe, are completed unnecessary in today’s age. More so, they create a detrimental ecosystem around the advancement of the concept of the ‘connected world.’ Now more than ever, Data Caps are becoming more of a staple for money making than for any real use.  So let’s see if we can’t help change that. Here’s the link, sign if you like.

http://wh.gov/HRlJ

Windows 8

Recently I got a new Laptop so that I could game without having to deal with low settings. It did get kind of annoying. My old Dell had a good processor and plenty of memory, but a Radeon HD 5400 at 1GB. So it wasn’t the best card for gaming anymore. It did fine when I bought it but not now. Now I have a Toshiba Qosmio with a faster processor, more ram and a 3GB Nvidia GTX 670M. I gotta say, I never understood why people wanted to play in ultra high settings, I do now. It’s fun.

Which brings us to the point in this post, besides being happy I have a new laptop, Windows 8. Windows 8 has so far been systematically destroyed by every tech that has ever reviewed it. I can’t say I understand why they would. The base code is different yes, it runs a new paradigm yes, but at the end of the day, bashing Windows 8 because it shifted paradigms is kind of like bashing Google for becoming more social. The most prevalent image of Windows 8 is that it looks like AOL. I think that if that’s your only reason for hating it you’re missing out.

Another common reason for bashing it is the difference between Windows 8 and RT. RT is the tablet and mobile version for Windows 8. Most people are angry that it’s a different structure, but in all honesty, what does that matter? It’s made for mobile and phones, if they want to restrict the code base in the interests of speed, they have that right. You don’t have to like it, but it has little to do with Windows 8 Desktop.

Onwards to Windows 8 Desktop. The way I’ll do this is Keywords. Bold Keyword and a description of why.

 

Fluidity

So one of the big things for me is Fluidity. A lot of the stuff in Windows 8 has a more fluid, logical path than before. If you open up the charms menu and hit settings, you get app specific settings but also links to the most common used settings. On desktop this is a link to control panel. If you’re in say mail and hit settings, you get settings important to mail. You want to add accounts? Hit account.

Maybe this doesn’t make sense to most people but it does to me. I like not having to go through a useless drove of options menu (though you still have that in desktop apps).

 

Start Menu

The new start menu may be the most hated and controversial feature of Windows 8. I like it. Let me explain one. First, it’s me. I know this is corny and lots of marketing companies use it, but Windows 8 is the first one that can legitimately claim it. I can arrange every application I have the way I want. I have shortcuts to my games under a games group, development tools under dev, all my computer stuff under local, etc and so on and so forth. Yes this seems like fluff, but it’s amazing fluff.

Secondly, Thank you Microsoft for removing the annoying start menu of old. There is no one that can honestly say they enjoyed the XP/Vista start menu and mean it. Don’t lie. You hated it. It was a mismatch of folders with weird names, company names and within those folders it was a chore finding the one program you needed and not the uninstaller. And hey! Some of those programs didn’t even have a start menu shortcut to start it, they just had a manual and uninstaller shortcut. Not anymore. Welcome to the new start menu where only EXE’s are shown. Where you can search for anything by name across all of your apps and install applications. Click start –> type update. Bam, Windows Update. Click Start –> type mass. Bam, Mass effect, Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3. Now that is useful. Hella useful.

 

Language Support

This doesn’t matter to a large majority of users, but I actually run programs that use the Chinese or Japanese character sets. Sometimes, I need these languages active. It’s always been annoying having to restart to do this. Sure, there was 7 Ultimate, but that was a $400 sink for language support that was included in other versions. For $400, I can get rid of the restart requirement. No. Windows 8 has this by default. It’s really nice too. I can instantly switch around to a language I need. Sure I have to download a language pack first, but thank you for making it easy to do without restarting.

 

These are just three of my favorite features. To be honest, I have a great time with Windows 8. It’s much faster and starting up from a shut down takes basically no time. Nothing else has really changed. Desktop applications that worked on Windows 7 still work on Windows 8. All my games work just fine without any problems.

I’m gonna give it a pass. Good job Microsoft.

Guild Wars 2

 

So, finally got convinced by workers to pick this up. Did so. Here’s the review of it from my standpoint. It came out of the gates with pretty high reviews. Will I agree or disagree? who knows.

 

Account Creation

So, the first step in any MMO is account creation. Nothing too big here, all normal, put in a name and what have you. It also lets you link your Guild Wars 1 account so if you had Eye of the North, anything in your hall of heroes gives you bonuses in 2.

I have only one thing to complain about. There is apparently a bug with verification of emails. No matter what, my link is always expired. Others have reported this. Now, this is a pretty big thing I would say, but it’s also small because it doesn’t stop you from playing. On the other hand, because it’s technically a pretty small issue, this is kind of a stupid bug to have and no real reason for it. That’s my only complaint.

 

Character Generation

Got your account? Yes? Good. Let’s boot this puppy up and let it patch. Couple hours later and I’m ready to go. Start up and you get the intro sequence. I usually hate intro sequences, especially movies, because I don’t care about them. I want to play my game, not watch a movie overview of the back story. However, this one? Is great. You should watch it. And the best part? It plays once. Finally, a game that plays it once and then turns it off. It’s not an option, it just turns off. You can go back and see it at anytime of course, but after the first view? It’s off during start up.

Character generation itself is fun. I don’t know why it’s fun, it’s all fairly standard short of options that are specific to race (Such as birth place or class) and to your character (personality, mentor) and to your class (first invention, helmet in the case of warriors, mask for mesmers, etc). Each one affects something in your game and that’s pretty amazing.

Back to Character Generation, it’s tons of fun. Not only in the way it’s presented, but in the options. hair color, armor color, eye color, face shape, build, height, etc. It’s just fun. Maybe it’s because it’s a bunch of options that are easy to change and they are easy to change. But whatever it is, it works great. The flow is natural and feels familiar and again, you have fun.

 

Welcome to Guild Wars 2

Out of CG, you go through a short video that describes your story, where you came from. Then you hit the newbie area on your newbie story. After that, you’re released unto the world in the first starter area. It’s fun, it’s personal, not too much going on. Lets you learn the game on your terms. I like it.

Here’s the problem, the game is entirely unbalanced. Take on a quest for level 1? Easy. Level 2? even if you’re not at that level, you can do it. After that? Forget it. From 5 onwards you will continually find yourself at a disadvantage against NPCs. To put this in perspective, I’m at level 10, I still have problems with a level 8 npc that does, on average, 80 damage. The game is impossibly hard and does not scale at all.

Also, the leveling. Each area is divided into places that are meant to serve as quest areas. There are also random events. So you run around to a quest area, do the quests and expect you’ll level. Wrong. You may get 50% of the way to the next level and you can’t go on to the quest area for the next level up because the NPCs will laugh at you.

So yeah, there is definitely a problem with NPC leveling and leveling your character in general. The good news? You can hit 80 with crafting. Have fun with that.

 

The Auction House

Does not work. has not worked. Still doesn’t work. So I have no idea what’s going on here. Amusingly, you know what does work? The real money store! Yeah!

 

Real Money Store?

Yep, apparently they thought offering bonuses for money would be a good way to get profits after they sell the game. I don’t particularly mind it since you can buy gems with gold for relatively cheap.

 

Banks and Inventory Space

This is an annoyance. Inventory space is scarce. Bank space is scarce at only forty slots and only one tab, you have to buy more with, you guessed it, gems from the real money store. But anyways, this probably would not be a huge deal, but the auction house is broke!

Oh yeah, did I mention there’s no autostack? No? Well now I have. There’s no autostack. In the inventory screen, at least you can hit compact which does it for you. But it doesn’t do it automatically!? WTF? Seriously? Not only that, but the bank screen has no option for compact, so you have to sort and stack everything individually.

 

Home Instances

Now I love the personal story system. Love it to death. What I don’t like is home instances. These are meant to be your player’s home. Let me say this one more time: These are meant to be your player’s home. Did you get that? They aren’t. They are instance areas filled with NPCs. They look more like guild hall templates. I mean, it’s your home instance, not guild hall instance. And they’re all just carbon copies of the area they happen to be in, but in an instance. There is no uniqueness here.

Do you love it or hate it?

I hate…some of it. I do not like leveling because it is broken, I hate home instances and I don’t understand why the auction house still does not work. Seriously. However, you should still buy it. What parts of the game do work are great. Now some people are going to run away from this review and never buy it, others are going to wait for this stuff to get fixed. It is totally worth your money in its current form though. It is fun, the personal story system is entirely unique and gives it a new perspective compared to other MMOs. I like it, I am not disappointed in spending my money, I am disappointed at how some of it ended up, but the parts I like, I really, really like. Like the classes, or the interface which is smooth and intuitive. I really like this game, I mean really. Now if they’ll fix the auction house I can go about my merry way and sell my copious amounts of  copper ore and wood.

 

Final Verdict: BUY

Anime Review: Hagure Yuusha no Estetica

Hagure Yuusha no Estetica is one of the latest batch of freshly started anime series in the season. The show revolves around the two people pictured above and their immediate classmates and friends. The animation style is good and the character design really isn’t that bad in the long run. They also manage to appeal to every male in existence in a single show – which is impressive.

The show itself has a fairly shallow plot but manages to draw intricacies into it that make you forget about it. The base plot is super powered hero protects his prized girl. However, with the fact that the first episode adds about 3 different plot arcs in ADDITION to the main one, you tend to forget that the base plot is so shallow. It’s a pretty good thing too and draws you away from the underlying concept being so utterly overdone.

This leads easily into talking about the fact that the plot arcs, while they seem simple, actually end up deepening the series. In actuality, I’m the kind of person that doesn’t think this ever works and yet, this is a perfect example of how it can. Nothing is simple here, everything is deeper than it seems. It’s actually a really deep series with a fairly base reason for existence, which again, I give credit for.

As to the series as a whole, I’m gonna give it a watch at this point. I want to see more of the episodes, the fighting is really well done and I like how the intricacies of the plot are starting to reveal themselves and get fleshed out.

Subber: SubDesu

Helping a Friend Out

So my friend started a blog about his photography. You should go visit, he does good work. I’m helping him out with the views department and getting him pushed up the rankings in google searches. Go check him out! Oh and i’ll post an anime related post tonight.

 

http://mattwarrenphotography.blogspot.com/

The New Anime Round Up

There is new Anime on the block, some which I’ve started to watch. My favorites from last season are going to have to be Papa no Ikuto wo kikinasai and High School DxD. Those two get the highest ratings from me. Still, my review of last season’s anime is not out yet. This is about the new anime, not the last anime.

The new anime I’ve been trying out is as follows:

Sankarea

Haiyore Nyaruko San

Tasogare Otome x Amnesia

Mysterious Girlfriend X

Shining Hearts – Shiawase No Pan

So far, Sankarea is taking the number one spot. I absolutely love this anime. It only took me two episodes to fall in love with it and I want to see more. It’s not good enough this isn’t released everyday. Now for the bad news, none of the rest are good enough to take second. I’ll give a brief explanation of why below.

In the case of Haiyore Nyaruko San, it’s just plain stupid. I thought it would be a supernatural comedy type deal with great action scenes. It is not. The attempt to make an anime world out of lovecraftian lore has failed. The premise is weak, at best, and never explained. The entire crux of the story, apparently nothing to do with the lovecraftian lore, is that a Nyarlathotep (Def: a formless lovecraftian Cthulhu Deity) transforms into a silver haired girl to be with this random dude. That’s it, no real explanation beyond that. They’re expecting the day to day hilarity of it all to keep the show going – Hint: It doesn’t.

In the case of Tasogare Otome x Amnesia, it’s…iffy. Tasogare is, at this moment, neither great nor bad. It can’t take a spot because it’s simply a sub-average anime to me. The first few episodes have basically retold the same day three different ways. Each one I suppose is to be more informative and more amusing – Hint: They aren’t. I don’t even know that I want to watch this show anymore. If there isn’t a good episode this next time, it’s going off my Hard Drive.

In the case of Mysterious Girlfriend X, I have only three letters: WTF. I mean seriously, only in japan could you find someone who makes an anime about a teenager who tastes someone else’s spit and becomes addicted to it. I don’t even. This show is so ridiculous that it makes my brain hit the desk. Granted, I will keep watching it. Why? Because the spit plays, thankfully, a tertiary role. It is presented as the main crux of the show (and it is) but thankfully the creator realized that if more than 5% of the show involved spit, most people wouldn’t watch it. Get past the WTF situation you’re presented with off the bat and it’s not a bad boy meets girl anime.

In the case of Shining Hearts – Shiawase No Pan, it gets a…well, a ok. Seriously, it’s not great, it’s not amazing, it’s certainly not something I’ll remember after this season, but it is okay. It is entertaining and worth wasting the twenty minutes an episode on. Like I said, it doesn’t take second place because it’s absolutely bland in every way possible, however, it is still worth seeing if nothing else to fill in the time this season. After all, if I have to choose this or one of the three above, it’s this one hands down. Still not second place material though.

All in all, looks like a poor anime season. Hopefully it’ll get better with some of the new stuff planned for the coming months.

Edit: Forgot to tell you who I’m grabbing my subs from. See below.

Sankarea and Tasogare Otome x Amnesia: Commie Subs

Haiyore Nyaruko San: Ahodomo Subs

Mysterious Girlfriend X: Horriblesubs

Shining Hearts Shiawase no Pan: Hadena subs

 

Top Ten Anime

My top ten anime, that’s right, my ten best anime. Let’s see how they rank up.If you want to know more about one of them, just click on the link next to name.

Number 1

Name: Eureka Seven

Year: 2005 – 2006

I loved this series. It’s a really amazing series for intertwining a love story in a save the world plot and managing to make fun of itself without being utterly stupid.

 

Number 2

Name: Neon Genesis Evangelion

Year: 1995 – 1996

Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of those things that you either love or hate. I loved it. The last episode, for the record, doesn’t make a lick of damn sense to the people that love it either. Still, this is an endearing title and love or hate, You know about it.

 

Number 3:

Name: Candidate for Goddess

Year: 2000

Don’t ask me why, but I was really fond of this series when it was out. I never did get to watch it all and that’s what I’m doing now, having just found a good seeded copy of the entire series.

Number 4

Name: Amagami SS

Year: 2010

Made after a romance game, this anime is pretty fun and details the different arcs in the game overtime. I love this series and I’m now into Amagami SS+.

 

Number 5

Name: Cowboy Bebop

Year: 1998-1999

Someone, somewhere is yelling ‘WHY THE HELL ISN’T THIS NUMBER ONE?’ Well, because it isn’t. I love the series, don’t get me wrong, and own it on blu ray, but it’s not my number one. It is however in my top 5. Sci fi action and drama is worth every penny and this series is still grossing, along with being one of the most well known series along with NGE.

 

Number 6

Name: Toradora!

Year: 2008-2009

Toradora was cute and amazingly well made. It easily made my top ten list after watching it. To this day, I still love the mix of characters and the interactions between them.

 

Number 7

Name: Ai Yori Aoshi

Year: 2002

Ai Yori Aoshi was an amazing series about overcoming blocks in order to marry someone. A story about love, friendship and screw ups, I really liked it. Enishi was also a good sequel. All together, this was a great series and well made.

 

Number 8

Name: Clannad

Year: 2007-2008

This. This right here is an amazing drama and sentimental piece. I will be the first to admit I cried and one they made After Story? I sobbed some more. And I don’t mean little sobs, I mean bawling into a pillow sobbing. Never before had I been so attached to an anime. Definitely an easy pick for any top ten anime list.

 

Number 9

Name: Fate/Stay Night

Year: 2006

Fate/Stay Night was something you either liked or hated. Generally, it was well liked by the otaku and anime community in both japan and the us. Based off of the game by the same name, this anime goes through the story as the protagonist having picked the sword class.

 

Number 10

Name: Usagi Drop

Year: 2011

Usagi drop just came out recently last year, but it managed to blow its way up my anime list to number 10. It is an extremely cute and introspective anime, the story itself all the reason you need to watch it, even though the anime part tends to be really well done too. This was one of my favorite animes and the story will touch your heart.