Z-Day Chapter I

I felt a slight jerk in my chest as I ran down the street, sweat pouring down my face, I was at a shortness of breath. I stopped at the next intersection, I heard my brother screaming at me; "Minato, hurry! They're coming, they'll kill you, hurry!"

Hearing that made my eyes bulge, I immediately sprang back up, running as fast as my tired body would allow. Just then it felt like my heart was trying to force its way through my throat. I had stupidly tripped over a small piece of debris. My hands flew above my head, I hit my chin on the hard concrete. I looked up and couldn't see my brother, he left me, I tasted blood. Everything got blurry, I flipped over on my back, and in the last bit of consciousness I had left I saw a lumbering figure, I felt a huge pain in my face, and blacked out.

I later awoke staring into utter blackness. I looked around and saw the same lack of light. There was a faint and rhythmic sound in the distance, I listened close, trying to focus on what it was. They were footsteps, loud ones. I turned my head slightly and added to the now louder footsteps was a faint light from what I could only guess was a hallway. As it got closer I analyzed the shadows, they looked like bars, I was in a cell!

Bro, you were wrong. I think to myself in a sarcastic way knowing I may die soon. I tried to pick up my arms and heard a slight jingle, chains.

"Dammit!" I yell aloud and the footsteps got louder, and faster, it was running now. I bowed my head, this would be it, I shut my eyes tight, waiting for Death to come, a knife, or, a sword, or a gunshot, but nothing. I opened my eyes slowly, feeling a moment of peace, until I looked up, there was the outline of a man, and down where his hand was there was a small glint. He unlocked the cell doors and swung them open violently, he walked up to me and shoved something into my neck, I expected Death to overcome me, but ti didn't, instead there was a light headed feeling, he took my blood.

He pulled something out of his back pocket, it was too dark to tell what, he inserted some of my blood into the machine, there was a series of soft beeps, and one loud one, he knelt down by me, unlocked the chains, and helped me up.

"You're clean," the outline says in an unemotional voice.

Update [28/8/09]

Ugh... I'm bored in a way, my just left to go party with her friends while I'm here watching TMZ, so I have come to the conclusion of making a blog update, EGAD what a blog is actually meant for. I may not do these too often you may notice like a two week jump between updates but I'll so my best. I kinda felt I had to do this because I've had like three reviews and a rant since I started school again and I figured I should mix it up. In this blog I will talk about school, games I'm looking forward to, the next review, and my new novel I started.

Right not much to say about school, it's school, boring old school, nothing too important has happened, but I made it through the first week only 35 left to go. No new douche bags in any of my classes yet just the old usual dee bags who annoy the living piss out of me.
The first game I'm looking forward to is The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, because hopefully it will be a sequel to one of my favorite games on the DS Phantom Hourglass, and this game has trains instead of boats, you have trains so the 'Spirit Tracks' are actual train tracks, interesting.Next is Dissidia: Final Fantasy, what is there to say this is a fan service game, all the good guys and bad guys from FF are having a huge battle, have I must.

Now we have Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, the main reason I want his game is because again it is a sequel to one of my favorite DS games.
And finally is Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, mainly want his one because the other PSP MGS game sucked the big one in my eyes, and hopefully some of the newer mechanics from MGS4 will be taken over to this game.

Last bit of the update my new novel, I can't say much since I only started it a few days ago and I'm only on Chapter V, but it should turn out half way decent. It's about me my friend Austin a.k.a. KillingTheLivingIsOnlyADayJob, and another character who joins or group named Minato form whom the story is told. So yeah I will work more on it later, and the next review is LoZ: Phantom Hourglass.

TSIOO
Goodnight and good luck

Riaru's Reviews: Professor Layton and the Curious Village

This is a review of a game from what is planned to be a six part series, the first three are currently out in Japan, the fist two are out here in the states and the forth is currently in development. The story in a nutshell is Professor Layton receives a letter from Lady Dahlia the former wife of the now dead Baron Reinhold, in the letter she tells him of the Baron's last riddle, he has hidden the Golden Apple somewhere in the town of St. Mystere, along with the remainder of his fortune. Layton being the puzzle solving genius that he is decides to go and check it out along with his young apprentice Luke. Not one of the best stories, but the fact that this is a puzzle game with a real story and not just a string of math problems or riddles and there are reasons for you trying to solve these puzzles, and quite a few are either gained by talking to the villagers, or related to the story.

The gameplay is a basic point and click fair you use the touch screen for movement and to examine/pick up items, as well as to talk to people. When doing the puzzles you either have to write in a text or numeric answer, or circle an item, or maybe click something. It's all pretty basic but works and the way you do puzzles and what not is done well enough for the controls not piss you off.

The graphics are really good, they remind me of Persona 3 only with an old English cartoon instead of an anime, there fully animated and voiced cutscenes, in a DS game, that was pretty revolutionary I guess, and during the conversations there are no voices but there are slightly animated stills of the characters, which are very nicely drawn. Overall like Persona 3 the graphics aren't fantastic technically, but they do have a very good art style.

Sorry this one was a little short, but it is time for the closing thoughts. The game will take you about 10-12 hour just to beat it, but also there are over 100 puzzles and you can attempt to uncover them all after beating the game, you can just roam around talking to people and clicking on everything like mad trying to find those tricky hidden puzzles. Overall buy it, and buy the second one, support Level 5 they're great people who make great games.

TSIOO
Goodnight and good luck

Shatterd Memories Indeed

Yup, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. Now before the ranting actually begins I would like you to do me a favor, okay? watch the two trailers below. Alright?

Silent Hill 1998 E3 Trailer


Silent Hill: Shattered Memories Hands On Demo

Now I would like to ask you: do these two games look anything alike? No? Well that is quite awful considering that Shattered Memories is supposed to be a Wii PS2 remake, which in all honesty I don't mind. But instead of Konami and Team Silent it's the hacks who made the absolute piece of shit Silent Hill: Origins. MY GOD!!! What were you thinking Konami giving these assholes the rights to your franchise AGAIN?! Honestly I will be picking up the game to see if the statements I've made in this rant are upheld once I actually do play the game. But from comparing the trailers and what I've seen of the gameplay.... well this may just make me hate this more than MGS: Rising.

It is nice to know about the psychology thing but that's probably not going to be handled well. And the scares like in Origins will probably be cheap ass jump scares.

TSIOO
Good night and good luck

Riaru's Reviews: Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII *SPOILERS*

Alright now begins a very long and bitchy review. If you are a fanboy of FFVII or Crisis Core hen please DO NOT read any farther!! You HAVE been warned. Okay the story and characters. The story stars Zack Fair vaugley established character briefly mentioned in FFVII, who was Cloud's SOILDER buddy. The story begins in a pointless training mission. YAY! And from there it goes as prequels go with slight hints at the future story and cameos for all the fanbos who will jizz their pants at the sign of 8 year old Yuffie. Okay as far as stories go this is not very great, especially as far as FF stories go. The Square Enix attempts to develop these characters but in the end I really didn't see the point, we all know what happens to Zack's sword, and who gets it.

The sound is halfway decent, with quite a few remixed and reused tunes form previous FF gaames. The only song I really have a problem is the battle song, it's okay for a while but it never changes and gets boring after a while. Now, the only real problem to me for the audio is the dialogue, this is quite bad honestly, the lines are pretty awkard at some points. And until Zack kills Angeal and stops acting like an arraogant asshole his lines are pretty bad.


Okay, this will be the section where I type for the most: the gameplay. Alright the first thing is the combat, now GameSpot and IGN are saying that the combat in this game is like Kingdom Hearts, to me this is a lie. Although they both are the button mashers Crisis Core has the Fusion Materia thing and that's okay but I'm here to complain. Let's start with the HUD, you have HP and MP which you should all know what those are, and then the EVIL little yellow bar at the bottom, the AP gauge!!! This is the most useless stat in the game, first off you pay to block, WTF here, what the fuck is the point of paying like 1 point every nano second so you end up running out the 5th time you want for a chance to block the enemies attack. And about an hour through the game, you get a move called Assault Twister, which costs about 5 AP to use and takes about twice as long to use as the normal attack, meaning you could do the same exact damage quicker and for free. Next is the DWM...... This is the little slot machine in the corner which is constantly spinning. This damn thing takes the place of the Limit Breaks, Summons, and leveling system. There are no EXP points in the game, and you level up by getting straight 7's in the slot machine when you randomly get a Modulating Phase, I don't even think I have to explain what is wrong with that. And to get a Limit Break during the Modulating Phase if you get three faces of the same character to do a limit break that you can't skip ever. And the Summons may be the worst of them all, the first summon you get is Ifrit, and in the first three hours after getting him I was finally able to use him. And that is because RANDOMLY during the RANDOM Modulating Phase will you be able to use them if you get three faces of the summon, and if you do not have summon then do you still get to use the summon? NO! You use a generic extremely lame ass move. And one more thing before the graphics section, there are these stupid little side missions you can do that are made to artificially enhance the game's length. Really Square Enix, you make long games all the time and you have to inflate this one with these stupid ass missions.

Alright the graphics were saved for last since this is the most optimistic this review will get so I saved it for later. The CG cutscenes do look very good, even the in-game graphics, and runs very well. And overall the game is a piece of shit with a random leveling system and a button mashing mess of a combat system.

TTITN
(^_^)v

No More WordPress For Riaru!!!

YAY! I am back here at the home of Riaru, and TSIOO. By some odd twist of fate when I put my log in info into the sign in area I logged into my account. I honestly am not very sure what the hell happened but who cares right, I'm back!!!

New review soon, and it's not Persona 3 (yet) I will have a review of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII and Resistance: Retribution, to hold everyone over Crisis Core tonight, Resistance tomorrow.

TSIOO
Goodnight and good luck.

Riaru's Reviews: .hack//G.U. Vol. 1//Rebirth

.hack//G.U. Vol. 1//Rebirth is the second .hack series by Namco BanDai Games. The game takes place in 2016 on an MMORPG named "The World". In this game there is a player named Tri-Edge and when he PKs you, your character is removed form "The World" and your real self falls into a coma. Tri-Edge PKed the main character Haseo's friend Shino, and she becomes a "Lost One". After which Haseo vows to become stronger and defeat Tri-Edge. After becoming stronger Haseo later confronts Tri-Edge, and fails epically. Tri-Edge uses the illegal move "Data Drain", and reformats Haseo's character sending him back to level 1. Haseo sets out to find a greater power since he finds out that brute strength alone cannot defeat Tri-Edge. On his search he discovers the power of Avatars and that he is one of the Epitaph User who possess these Avatars. And thus he sets out and attempts to defeat his mortal enemy.

The characters are for the most part the characters are likeable, but the minor characters only seem to get a shallow development and a one sided personality whilst Haseo, Atoli, and the other BIG important characters get their goals and pasts stated. This especialy upsets me with the characters of Endrance and Matsu. Matsu is the unit 7 captian of "Moon Tree" guild. He used to be a PKer, as stated by "Moon Tree's" guild master states. Unfortunately the game does not delve very much into his past. Same with Endrance, he had a cat that was precious to him, but the cat died, I think, and the virus trying to take over the game AIDA took the form of Endrance's cat almost brainwashing him into helping AIDA. Unfortunately we never actually learn why this cat means so much to him. Oh well, what are you going to do?

As far as graphics go there really isn't that much here to say. They look pretty fluid. The animations are pretty alright. There is no chibification, all regular character models. The style reminds me of an anime which is pretty cool considering that the game is based of anime. Maybe in the future I will review .hack//SIGNS, and .hack//ROOTS.

The gameplay is fairly simple X to attack, O to guard. However the battles are not random, there is a set amount of enemy parties that walk around, most of them guarding chests. If you manage to get close to the enemies without them seeing you, you can press the X button and do a suprise attack. There are a couple more noteworthy things, there are special moves you canuse called "Skill Trigger" by pressing R1, and on occasion you can do a Ren Geki Finish, which is a more powerful slowed down version of one of your "Skill Trigger". And the final noteworthy feature is that you can generate a random area at one of the transporters in the towns.

Well dear lord, that was about an HOUR of fucking work on this review. Ah well, long ass review for a long ass game. It is 15+ hours and takes quite some time to complete. I am a pretty avid RPG player, and uh, yeah it took me 16 hours and 39 minutes. I would reccomend it to most RPG fans.

TSIOO
Good night and good luck.

Updates Part 2

Wow 2 updates in 1 day. Holy shit, that's like a record. But um, not too much to say but in my last post I said I would review .h//G.U.//V1: R, or .hack//G.U.//Vol.1: Rebirth(aw fuck AGAIN!) and the second one. I said it would take a little while but I have thought and made a estimate at how long it will take. I'm guessing another week maybe a little more.

I also mentioned I may get Okami, for PS2. I will have to wait a while for someone to drive me to GameStop, but once I get it I will try and beat as soon as possible, and make a review. I heard it was about 30+ hours. Ugh, about another week guys. On a side note I got a couple games for PSP and Beyond Good and Evil, which am close to beating, just stuck at the end where I have to go pearl hunting again. But review of that and Resistance: Retribution and Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Plus. So yeah see you again, and I still can't believe I updated twice in 1 day. Damn what is wrong with me?

TSIOO
Good night and good luck

An Update

For my birthday I got the first ,hack//G.U. game as well as a few other great titles I will not go into to detail about them here however. I'd say I'm fairly close to the end of .hack//G.U.//Vol. 1: Rebirth, dear god I hate typing that. And as soon as that is done I'm going to migrate my save file over to .h//G.U.//V2: R which is short for .hack//G.U.//Vol. 2:Reminisce... oh dammit. And then once that is done I will get to work on a review of both games.

And another noteworthy topic yesterday I got 25 dollars for my birthday as well, which will go towards... you guessed it a game. I think I may spend it on Okami a game developed by the now extinct Clover Studios who sadly were shut down by Capcom after the release of God Hand. I've got high hopes for Okami and I hope they are met if not exceeded.

Do keep in mind that .h//G.U. and Okami are all very long games and will take some time to complete. Thank you.

TSIOO
Good night and good luck.