Hiroshima

After paying about £80 I got the oppertunity to visit Hiroshima with the university I'm studying at. Of course this meant I was not able to game properly for about 2 days but the trip was definately worth it.

The trip was spread over 2 days although most of that was spent travelling by bus from Nagoya. Either way, on the first day we got to see Miyajima which is where the floating gate is. This was of course a lot of fun going around and taking in the history. Although history aside there was a hell of a lot of deer just wandering around. It's really quite weird just to see deer mingling around a small town like that but they don't seem to mind the tourists.

On the second day we visited the peace museum which housed exhibits regarding the bombing of Hiroshima during the second world war. Now, I'm a history student, I've heard plenty of stories and seen many pictures of war and the like, but the information in this museum strikes on a whole differently level. I'm not going to go into a big lecture about world peace but the impact that place had was pretty profound.

I spent the best part of about 5 minutes looking for a game arcade before giving up and hitting the town so I guess I'm going to have to go back sometime to see what kind of competition Hiroshima has to offer

Pop n' Rage

I am a big fan of the rhythm game genre. I played the shit out of DDR and since coming to Japan I've become a big fan of games like Jubeat and IIDX. However, there is one game that really took me by surprise and that's Pop n' Music.

For those unfamiliar Pop n' Music is a tremendously cutesy rhythm game with a 9 button panel when its played in an arcade. You can check out youtube to see what I mean when I say a cutesy design so when you play it you're not really expecting anything hard. Although after I got going with it I couldn't have been more wrong.

Pop n' Music, next to IIDX is one of the most ball bustingly hard rhythm games I have ever played. The faster charts come down so quick and dense with notes and the and keys are so spread out that I just find it impossible to keep track of everything. Although little by little I'm getting better and better.

That said, I decided to pick up a copy of Pop n' Music Portable on PSP. Now I don't want to sound cocky but I got damn good at DJ Max Portable. So I jumped into Pop n' Music Portable thinking that I'd just stomp all over the hardest modes although once again, I was very VERY wrong. The game has a 5, 7 and 9 button mode and I'm struggling with the goddamn 7 button. Maybe its just because I'm not used to the button layout but these games seriously kick my ass.

I think what Pop n' Music represents, is the key difference between the Japanese and Western markets when it comes to Rhythm games. Games like Guitar Hero, Rock Band and DJ Hero are fun as hell to play in a group, but they pose very little in the way of challenge. I was playing expert songs in DJ Hero and getting max grade for them within a week of taking it out of the box. Of course this doesn't mean these games don't have hard songs, but the hardest songs of Guitar Hero and DJ Hero are on about the same level difficulty as some of the medium level songs of things like IIDX.

Like I said before though, these games are fun as hell to play in a group. You break out the Guitar Hero at a party, everyone in that room will be able to pick it up and clear a song 2 even if they don't play games too often. If you broke out your imported IIDX at a party, chances are people would not be too happy when their constantly failing the easiest songs because the controllers aren't exactly newbie friendly.

So I suppose my final point is that you shouldn't really judge a game by its design. For all the hardcore rock star stuff Guitar Hero throws at you, it still doesn't hold a candle in skill compared to Pop n' Music's cutsie J-Pop. But as far as I'm concerned, both games are damn good.

Taiko Drums at Nagoya Festival

On my travels between arcades in this country I see a lot of interesting stuff. Nagoya Festival was SO interesting that it kept me out of them for 2 days! Anyway I took a (very badly shot) video of some of the Taiko players in Osu Kannon that I came across, so...enjoy!

Hmm...Post Time!

Remember what I said about posts coming thick and fast? Yeah, I lied. This is a combination of my general lack of enthusiasm to update and the constant stream of homework and tests I'm getting from the University.

Plus, my gaming has kind of fallen into a routine that writing about seems somewhat pointless. I'm itching to see a good movie or buy something new but being in Japan kind of limits that somewhat. Anyway! I've started playing Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey but I'll write more on this later, I have a big rant about this compared to pokemon so I'll save that for its own post.

Another reason I've not been posting is my involvement with the Kyudo Club over here. For those not familiar Kyudo its Japanese Archery and when things get going in full swing its damn cool. I also got to experience Nagoya festival, which was fun as all hell. I got some really badly shot footage of the Taiko drums which I'll upload to youtube and link here in the next day or so.

I want to post more but when there's not really much interesting stuff to blog about I really can't be bothered. Anyway, watch this space for some crap touristy videos!

The Return!

Wow, its been an interesting couple of weeks without the Internet in my flat, but now I'm up and running at full force! I'm a little annoyed I can't play any Counter Strike over here since my ping is constantly at 300 for any UK servers, but I still have pretty much everything else, so all is well.

Classes have well and truly started up now, and this university is unrelenting with its timetable. 5 days a week, 9am starts! I'm not used to this crap. Although class is pretty fun and its all done by 12 which leaves a good amount of time to catch up with my gaming.

The arcades are still as fun as ever. I've pretty much settled on Jubeat and Mahjong 4 as my main games of choice and with those convenient stat cards I get to enlarge my e-peen with delicious stats and rankings

I also decided to cave in and get myself some PSP games while I was walking around a book store. I managed to pick up Persona 3 Portable, just because I'm a massive Shin Megami Tensei fan and another interesting little game called God Eater which looks like Namco's answer to Monster Hunter. I've yet to play either since I'm still finishing off Panzer Dragoon Saga, but all in good time.

So that is that, now I'm all set up expect the posts to come thick and fast. There's lots to tell

Arcades! Arcades everywhere!

When I'm not at home playing Panzer Dragoon Saga or crapping myself over tests and all the other stuff going on, I'm spending a good portion of my time in the arcades near the uni.

These places, are immense. I don't know about the rest of the world but in the UK, the arcades are shocking. Stuff doesn't work and the choice of games are generally balls. Here though, I've been playing DDR X2, Jubeat, Beatmania, Mahjong 4, Tekken, Street Fighter, Mushihime Sama.....the choice of games within the local area is rediculous.

The best part of all this is the little plastic cards you can get for about 400 yen that track your stats for each game. Being the massive statistics whore that I am I love this crap, although I've only got a MJ4 card and a e-musement pass so far, I feel that my wallet will have more game cards than anything else by the end.

Well, I'm gonna end this and try and get some internet set up, this shit is hard as hell.

Peace!

Japan Times! No Internet and getting generally destroyed

I was hoping to update way WAY more than this but I've not got any internet in my room so I'm pretty much devoid of internet unless I make a trek to the local cafe.

Anyway, I've had lots of orientation and shit like that, and Japan is fucking hot as all hell. It's a ton of fun though. We found a local arcade last night where we proceeded to get destroyed at Street Fighter 4, Tekken and Beatmania.

This is going to be short since I'm on a limited battery, so I'll post some more once I get this damn interent set up

Peace!

Busy! Busy! Busy!

I'm pretty sure that my readership at this point in time is non existent, but just in case I felt I better post something

Anyway, since I'm leaving for Japan in 3 days I've not really been doing anything worth posting about. I'm not keeping this blog as some personal diary so I'm not going to bore people with stories of what subway I ate today but hopefully I'll have some quality posts up in the next few days.

Thankfully my cold has pretty much subsided but it was still stopping me getting any real sleep last night. As a result I decided to pop my copy of Pulp Fiction into my DVD player and give that a watch. I can't stress enough for anyone who hasn't seen this film how good it is. The writing is snappy and funny, the characters are awesome, the entire cast puts in a great performance and the music is top notch.

I also watched a pretty surreal movie called Brazil. I enjoyed watching it but this was at the height of my cold so I was too busy coughing and doing copious amounts of nose blowing to pay too much attention to it, so most of it went way over my head. I don't really want to do a post on Brazil until I have a chance to sit down and watch it properly

Well that's that then, next time I hope I have something better to post rather than 2 crap movie reviews

Downtime with Worms

As I mentioned in my first post, I am sick with a cold. Due to this my usual bouts of gaming and movie watching has been ground to a halt for the last day or so. However there is at least one thing worth mentioning and that's Worms Reloaded.

I was a big fan of Worms a long time ago. I spent hours upon hours playing Worms United and even more hours into Worms Armageddon. I got annoyed with the series when they started doing it in 3D and up until now have pretty much ignored every other worms game. Although Worms is back and its awesome! I've not played too much off it, I played a quick match and one online game with a buddy and it's the same old Worms we knew and loved from back in the day.

I'll post something with more depth on this one once my nose stops killing me slowly

Nightmare House 2

Yesterday I finished a very cool Half Life 2 mod known as Nightmare House 2. I don't have much experience with the Half Life modding community, in fact, what few mods I have played usually suck gratuitous amounts of ass so when it comes to this kind of thing I'm not really expecting very much

Anyway, Nightmare House 2 is, as you probably would have guessed, the sequel to Nightmare House. I had a go trying to get the original Nightmare House to work but every time I booted the game it would load up the Counter Strike Source menu and then crash instantly. That said, the developers have very kindly put the original Nightmare House into Nightmare House 2 as a prequel chapter known as prologue.

Basically, the game is a first person shooter set in a house (NM1) and a hospital (NM2) and there's no real goal aside from get from one end of the level to the next. What this game is very good at doing though is generating jump scares without coming off as annoying. In terms of atmosphere, the game is OK but it doesn't hold a candle to big name horror titles, but then again, its a Source mod so what do you expect, right? What the game is very good at though, is bombarding you with jump scares that keep you on edge at all times. The scares are very well done, very well thought out and expertly placed.

This game succeeds at the jump scare mechanic where other more recent horror games like Dead Space ultimately failed. In Dead Space, when one of the alien things would get up and run at you after pretending to be dead it was met more with a "sigh" and a swift shot to the limbs rather than the "WHOA!" reaction which I think they were aiming for.

The game also has its fair share of "Jesus Christ what the fuck is going on?" moments and the level design is really well done. The game is also voice acted and the voice acting is actually pretty good, to me it really sounded like a group of decent VA's did this game. To its detriment, maybe, the game is pretty short, but then again its a free mod you can play as long as you own a copy of Half Life 2: Episode 2 so I don't think anyone will begrudge the game for its length

Either way, this is easily worth checking out. I'd love to see these guys create a horror game with a bigger budget, they have some very good ideas.

You can download the game here: http://nh2.wecreatestuff.com/

First Post!

I've tried blogging many times and have always just let every blog I do die out because I can never be bothered to update it after a while. However, at time of writing this first post I am sick with a cold and in my sleepless boredom I have decided to give it another shot.

Basically I'm going to use this space just to talk about games I've played or movies I've watched or rant on a lot of pointless stuff and maybe there'll be a few people who will be entertained by my ramblings. Probably not, but who knows, right?

In less than a week I'm going to be hopping on a plane to Japan as part of my year abroad for my course at University, so at the very least I'll be using this space to document my travels for the friends and family that I left behind.

Anyway I'm going to wrap this first post up, but today I saw that Scott Pilgrim Vs The World and I finished a rather good Half Life mod known as Nightmare House 2, so more on those later!