Paladin's Quest, Part 1: Whiskey Dick

A Game For The Ages

Paladin's Quest is a 1993 RPG for the Super NES. Originally called "Lennus" in Japan, this is a fairly underrated classic with a unique world. They made a second game, Lennus 2, but it was never released outside of Japan. This series is similar to Dragon Quest in terms of how it plays, with a higher than average difficulty that is, at times, brutal. Join me for this look at a game that almost no one played. For these posts, I'll be calling the game "Lennus" - the original name of the game. The one that means something.

Movie Review: The Hunger Games

An original concept, to say the least

Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson

Directed by Gary Ross

It has been #1 at the box office for four straight weeks now. This highly-hyped movie is based on the first installment of a book series by Suzanne Collins. It tells the story of a young woman who is thrust into the spotlight in a bloodthirsty, imperialistic society that has lost its moral fiber; if she survives long enough, she may well be the catalyst for change that could bring the whole thing crashing down.

The Rest of Highlander: The Source

The Worst Movie I Watched This Year

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh.

Hagane (SNES)

Jungle of Massacre

Today, I'll be talking about an SNES game that is actually really good, one that I played a few years ago. Unfortunately, almost no one else played it. Chances are, you've never heard of it. Hagane is, in a way, the spiritual successor to the old NES Ninja Gaiden games. It's the closest the SNES ever got to Ninja Gaiden 4 (or more likely, "Super Ninja Gaiden 4"). It's unfortunate that it didn't have the NG name to boost it to prominence.

Game Review: Mass Effect 3

March 2012

PC, XBox360, PS3

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Developer: Bioware

Time to Complete: 35-40 hours

Mass Effect 3 is, thus far, one of the most eagerly-awaited games of 2012 by far. The first two Mass Effects are among the most beloved sci-fi action-RPGs of all time, and expectations for the third installment were running high for months in advance of release. Luckily for the players, the finale to this epic trilogy manages to meet most of the expectations set forth by the playerbase. It has a bit of a slow start, but once it gets going it is as epic as its predecessors.

Shien's Revenge (SNES)

Heat Haze

As one of the few games designed for the Super NES Mouse, Shien's Revenge filled a very small niche in the gaming marketplace. Back in 1994, I wanted this game for a time. I'm glad I didn't find it, because it's about a half hour long. And back then, new games were so few and far between that I could only get games with substantial play value. While this game may have eluded me in 1994, I got ahold of it in 2010 and finally gave it the playing I wanted to give it many years previous.

True Lies (SNES)

He Will Grope You.

True Lies, for the Super Nintendo, is one of the lamer movie-based games of the 1990's. However, it has a special place in my heart. You see, this is the only SNES game I ever owned as a kid that I never actually finished back then. It was just too difficult, and too...bad. Luckily, emulators exist, so I was able to revisit this as an adult. Armed with adult patience (but lacking kid-reflexes), could I defeat this great bear from my youth? Join me, as I Legends of the Fall this thing.

Power Blade 2 (NES)

This is the most attention anyone has paid to Power Blade in the last twenty years

The sequel to one of the NES's greatest and most under-looked games, Power Blade 2 is... painfully average. By 1992, the NES had been largely replaced by the SNES, and the few new NES games tended to be subpar and forgotten. Why they didn't just do a Super Power Blade on the SNES is beyond me, but instead we got this. That said... it ain't bad.

Love Hina Games

Love Hina is a Japanese TV show best known for having a male lead who gets victimized regularly for no apparent reason by the women on the show. In other words, Love Hina is atrociously bad. At least, we can presume that much. I don't watch the damn thing. The problem is, they made games based on this infernal show. Women don't play video games, so I'm not sure how the publishers expected to sell any copies. I sat down and spent a few minutes with a pair of these non-gems, which were never released outside of Japan. The results are... unpleasant.

The 212

Following on the heels of my last post, here are some more shots of Manhattan. I took all of these, and hopefully they're enjoyed.

Ghosts

A little something I wrote last year.

Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II

99th post, ladies and gentlemen

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II
2011
Directed by David Yates
Written by J.K. Rowling
Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert "Sexual Carrot Cake" Grint
Rated PG-13

The eighth and final installment of the storied Harry Potter movie series brings the storied franchise down to new levels of uninhibited sexual depravity of the kind normally only seen at college parties in Ancient Rome, obscene vulgarity that would make Quentin Tarantino's mouth blush, and graphic violence that would give pause to Eli Roth. Nothing that I just said is true, but this movie does feature the word "bitch"... and to some people, that's equal to all of the above in badness. If you aren't one of those people, you may already like this movie, so read on. Fortunately for us, the Republicans haven't found a way to ban Harry Potter for having "pot" in his name. Yet.

The Xenoverse Awards

In space, everyone can hear Shion Uzuki's footsteps

The main game-related project I did this year was play through the Xenosaga series and Xenogears. No Xenoblade yet, but it has no connection thematically to the Xenoverse works so it isn't relevant for this particular post. Besides, if what I've heard about it is true, it'd sweep the awards if it were included.

Xenosaga is a re-imagining loosely based on the origin story of Xenogears, and if you like either game/series, the other is worth playing. Here I'll be doling out awards to the four games that transpire in this Xenoverse. Some assembly required, some restrictions apply. No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited. Act now and we'll include a free custom gourmet genuine imitation Miang nipple.

The 2011 Year In Review

2011. It was an alright year. Well, the last sixth of it was pretty interesting. Let's look at the year in media as I experienced it.

Power Blade (NES, 1991)

 

Today I'm going to look at a game that was prominently featured in the first Nintendo Power I ever read: Power Blade. Might have been the first game I ever wanted to play. Back in July 2008, I finally got a chance to play this game, after all those years. I took some screen shots and saved them up to unleash upon the world like a plague of locusts. Now, the time has come.

Movie Review: Avatar

Avatar

Directed by James Cameron

Starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigorney Weaver, Stephen Lang

Rated PG-13 for epic battle sequences and warfare

Avatar was released two years ago. Why review it now, or at all? Because it turned out to be a game-changer in the movie genre; it isn't hyperbole to say that this is one of the most significant movies of the past ten years. As far as cultural impact goes, this ranks up there with other influential and often-emulated sci-fi fare like The Matrix and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and may even surpass them on some level. On the other hand, the movie has been out long enough and been seen by enough people that the need for a review is almost nil. While this is technically a review of sorts, consider it more my thoughts and musings on the highest-grossing movie of all time and on James Cameron's work in general.

Movie Review: The Thing (2011)

The Thing
2011
Directed by Matthijs van Heijningen
Starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton
Rated R

For Halloween, I'm checking in with a movie review. The prequel - not sequel, not remake - to the 1982 John Carpenter movie of the same name, The Thing has some big shoes to fill. The Carpenter movie was easily one of the scariest movies ever made. It was (and by extension, this was) based on a 1938 short novel called "Who Goes There?" by John Campbell. Not the 50's movie The Thing From Another World, as is commonly believed. We get all that? Good.

Bebe's Kids: The Worst SNES Game Ever

This may be the worst game I've ever played. Much has been written about this game on the internet already, but most of it only pertained to the first two levels, since very few people have ever had the steel balls necessary to forge onward past that. Luckily, I DO have steel balls, and the clanking that they make during sex is what will ruin all three of my future marriages. Thus, I went so far as to actually beat the game, stopping only occasionally to check the walls of my soundproof, padded room for an escape. I'll be covering the entirety of Bebe's Kids in this post, something that, to my knowledge, has never been done this way on the internet. And if someone has done this, let me know so I can ask them how they keep their steel balls from clanking during sex.

Game Review: Final Fantasy XIII

 Paradigm Shift

Playstation 3, XBox 360, 2010

Publisher: Square Enix

Developer: Square Enix

Time to Complete: 35-75 hours

It has been nearly two months since my last post on here... for this, I blame last week's hurricane. To the joy of millions of the elderly, this post-less span now ends with a look at Final Fantasy XIII. There was a sizable - years long - gap between the twelfth Final Fantasy and the thirteenth, so in a way ending my temporary hiatus from posting with this game is fitting. A paradigm shift in the Final Fantasy series that eshews many of the conventions that have defined it over the years, FFXIII is a game that RPG fans definitely have a love/hate relationship with. Having just finished it, what are my (as objective as I can) impressions of this divisive game? Read on.

Movie Review: Toy Story 3

Reprinted from MIT's The Tech - http://tech.mit.edu/

I originally wrote this nearly a year ago.

Toy Story 3
2010
Directed by Lee Unkrich
Starring Tom Hanks, Tim Allen
Rated G

The culmination of a series that may well be Pixar’s magnum opus, Toy Story 3 is hands-down one of the best movies of the year.