|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
| 02 - 11 - 03 |
|
So Far 12:10 pm My new work schedual is killing me. Last semester I worked three hours a day in the afternoon, three days a week. This worked out exceptionally well as far as my classes went, and I honestly looked forward to going to work. Plus, with 9 hours a week, the pay wasn't bad either (around $150 a month). This semester however, I'm working in the mornings (9-12) only two days a week. I am not a morning person, so not only must I force myself out of bed and into the bitter cold, but I also have to force myself to work on the site. Don't get me wrong, I love maintaining this site, but it is forced. Instead of coming so natural and easy, I must make a conscious effort to update it. Regardless, updated it is. Another revised review is up, this time Xenogears. I tweaked the template for reviews a bit, and added a third picture to the mix instead of just two and the logo. This means a new picture went up in the FF7 review, but I'm not sure it's worth checking out if you've already read the review. Besides the reviews, you can look forward to a completely new section this coming Thursday: Art. I had decided to draw my D&D character, Cyprus, and the pencil drawing looked amazing so I scanned it and colored it in Photoshop. I don't have the time to upload it now, so that's why it will be coming Thursday. Last update wasn't archived either due to time constrains, but should be archived Thursday as well. The Rants section will be replaced by Art, for reasons I don't have the time to go into now. One last item of note is the "personality" quiz result shown below. I don't know if I'm going to start a sort of tradition of posting a different test's result every time I update, but it is possible. It doesn't really contribute to the air of sophistication this site pretends to have, but hey, I liked my result. If the Iwaynet ISP already had Red Raven assigned, I could very well of been Red Wolf. Imagine how much different everything would have been. It may not seem like much of a difference, but Red Raven has more synergy than Red Wolf does (including a different connotation) so I might not have gotten into doing reviews, websites, or anything at all. And then what website would you be currently reading? It boggles the mind. Iwaynet had Red Raven open though, and the rest, as they say, was history. |
| 02 - 13 - 03 |
|
Neon 11:45 pm There is no possible way this would work. The article itself sums it up better than I could. Yes. Update. Rants is axed and Sketch officially takes its place. This will be a Good Thing, I assure you. The reason for the deletion of the rants area is explained in the FAQ section. The Sketch section does contain an entry: my first Photoshop creation. Info about the picture and the picture itself can be accessed either with the Sketch button to the left, or simply by clicking here. Meanwhile, the archive is back up to date, although that's not particularly noteworthy. Now you know, and knowing is half the battle. The future? Expect another piece of D&D art at some point, in addition to the porting over of my normal RPGamer reviews. If you still haven't checked out the revised Final Fantasy 7 and Xenogears reviews, do so. They're easily my best work. Other than that, I'll try to whip up some other reviews at some point, possibly some concerning movies and/or anime. Time will tell. |
| 02 - 18 - 03 |
|
Let's Review 11:15 pm Less than a week until Xenosaga is released. It's getting exciting now. Four reviews have been successfully converted and are now stored for your viewing pleasure in the aptly-named Reviews section. I'm going alphabetically down the list on RPGamer, converting as I go. It's tougher than it looks though, so I only plan to convert maybe four or five at a time. I was going to put in the extra effort to convert A-C, but I remembered that I really don't like the reviews I did for Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross. I was the under the influence of nostalgia at the time of writing, and thus those reviews do not correctly represent my true opinion of said games. What this means to you is that I'm going to be working on two more "revised" reviews, to be uploaded at some point in the future. If either of them even remotely come close to the quality of the revised FF7 review, you'll be in for a treat. Speaking of a treat, witness the genesis of a new section: Features. This will be the miscelleoneous section of the website, and where I plan to put things like game guides and other such...well...features. Right now, I'm thinking of writing a sort of D&D web-journal and Features would have been the only place to put it. Bam! New section. The web-journal will be entertaining I suspect, as I play in two different campaigns each week, as a good cleric in one and an evil cleric in the other. Both campaigns are around level 7 at the moment, but the two different DMs have proven themselves to be rather sadistic people. It should be fun, but time will tell. That's basically it for this update. I plan on doing some more review conversions Thursday, and the beginnings of that D&D web-journal could be started on Thursday as well. There is also a slim chance that I might actually work on my Bio. It depends entirely on how the next few days pan out though. Till then. |
| 02 - 20 - 03 |
|
El Cid 11:53 am That's the name of my evil cleric, in a Forgotten Realms D&D campaign. It is also a very appropiate reference to a humerous inside joke between my friends from high school. Remind me to explain it sometime. I have had a very productive updating streak here lately. Three more reviews have been converted, and the Fallout Tactics and Super Smash Brothers guides have been saved from oblivion. You can view the guides in the Features section. I still have yet to fully HTMLize the Smash Brothers guide, but if the past week was any indication, it will be done here shortly. I can't promise that though, because Xenosaga comes out in a mere four days. Four days. I read a very interesting review about the US version here. My biggest fear was that the American voice actors were going to destroy the game completely; a valid fear as it was reported a while back that the majority of the game and plot was voice acted. Thankfully, it appears that the voice acting was spot-on. While the review brings up some issues about the music, plot, and gameplay, I surprisingly do not care. The voice acting was my primary concern. I can deal with the rest. In any event, you can be sure that I will not hesitate to post my first impressions about the game. I'll probably probably just post impressions here, but if I organize it enough, I might put it in Features or something. It depends on how much time I have. |
| 02 - 25 - 03 |
|
Saga 12:11 pm First off, no, I don't have Xenosaga yet. Yes, it's killing me. The upshot to this tormenting wait is that I have converted a full 9 reviews, which encompasses all of the Final Fantasy games. Reading a few of them reminds me just how much I have advanced as a writer. Compare the writing style and...well...the sheer writing quality between the FF8 review and the revised FF7. The difference is apparent even looking at a more recent review of FFX and the revised FF7. Once things settle down on this end, hopefully I'll have to the time to revise some more of the reviews I've written. Before I do that though, you can expect some anime reviews as I've started working on those. Not much else to talk about really. I'm going to eat, go to my computer lab, and then get my grubby hands on a copy of Xenosaga by 3:30 pm. Full impression can be expected Thursday. See you then. |
| 02 - 27 - 03 |
|
Xenocide 2/27/03 11:22 am Five more reviews have been converted, bringing the total reviews up to 23. Twenty more to go. This worries me a bit because I got the first of many forseen "disk space is full" warnings today. I have to admit though that I've been pretty clever up to this point working with only 5 megs of space, but 43 reviews * 3 pictures > 5 megs. I have been resizing the review pictures in Photoshop to free up some space, but that's only going to work for so long. I might have to come to the eventual decision of moving Razor Witt to another site or asking for some more space or something. But none of you guys care about that, do you? You only care about one thing: Xenosaga impressions. For the sake of brevity I'll spare you the details of my escapade to EB, but it's important to note that I only got the game yesterday around 5:00 pm and have thus played only two hours of it. With that disclaimer out of the way, here I go: When they mention Xenosaga has long cutscenes, they mean it. It took me nearly 40 minutes to make it to the first save point, and I didn't find a second one until the 1:26 mark. So far however, it is looks promising. The best way to view the game, as suggested by Googleshng of RPGamer fame, is as an 80 episode anime DVD. The intro, while very interesting, pales in comparison to the crazy Xenogears introduction, but to Xenosaga's credit, most videogames' intros pale in comparison to Xenogears'. After the initial intro there is about 15 minutes more of cutscenes before you are thrust into a virtual training room of sorts. It usually takes me anywhere between 2-10 hours to get intimately comfortable with a given game's battle system, but I fear it will take much longer with Xenosaga's. It is not that its inherintly confusing, it is just that I am unable to interpet many of the various battle menus. For example, there is suppose to be a window in bottom-right corner of the screen that allows you to see whose turn in coming up, a la FFX. I have yet to be able to accurately predict whose turn is coming up with that window. I should also mention that this game is hard. I haven't died yet, but I have had a few close calls in which blind luck was the only thing saved my ass. The A.G.W.S. kick ass, by the way. I read some reviewers who stated that they were not very useful or some bullshit but I have found them very useful in taking down some of the tougher mechanical enemies. Moving on, it amazes me to this day that FFX still stands as the best-looking 3D RPG ever made. Xenosaga doesn't look bad, but it still is unable to top a game that was released two years ago. The character design is pretty good though. I haven't heard much of the music, but what I have heard I have liked. What is especially good are the choir pieces which are absolutely haunting. I will probably be getting the soundtrack at some point I'm sure. And if you're wondering, the voice acting is pretty good. Sometimes they don't entirely synch up with the lips, but they are just as good if not better than FFX's voice acting. Well, those are my first impressions of Xenosaga after two hours. Due to the fact that you must play Xenosaga in such huge blocks, I probably won't be progressing very far until I leave for Spring Break next Friday. In the midterm I will be posting updated impressions as I write them, converting more reviews, and posting the first of a series of anime reviews. See you Tuesday. 
|