phrequency.net

Merry Christmas

Since I’m on a plane on the way to Japan, this was actually created by me a day ago to be scheduled to be posted.

And so I’m celebrating Christmas with my best Christmas present yet (bought by me and given to me). I suppose I could consider this super long flight the “opening of the gift”. While in Japan I’ll be traveling to Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo. Originally I was going to make an effort to goto Hiroshima, but never got around to getting my new camcorder so it’ll be on hold until I return.

The super abridged list of things to do in Japan…
- make a pilgrimage to Akihabara and check out a maid cafe (though I still don’t get the appeal, even as an otaku).
- hot springs resort
- visit the temple as seen in Wasabi
- have a real ramen bowl… especially at Kunigami-ya as seen from the HG clip (relatively NSFW)

I’ll be gone until the 6th of January. Perhaps I should make it a resolution to update my blog more often. So much stuff to blog about (Persona 4 review, going back to Persona 3 FES, lots of anime reviews, oh and Japan just to top it off). I’ll at least make an effort to document my trip somehow.

Tags: christmas, japan, new years, ramen

Countdown to Japan

So it’s Christmas Eve and everyone I know is all nice and cozy visiting family, getting married, midnight mass, and all that homey-type stuff.

What will I be doing to celebrate Christmas Eve? Staying up all night until my flight to Japan the next morning. By then, everyone will be waking up and opening presents. I’ll be asleep like a rock thank you very much.

I guess you get the point. I’ll be leaving for Japan tomorrow morning. For the most part, I’ll be completely disconnected from any form of communication. It’ll be interesting, considering the only exposure I had to Japan in the first place include learning the language, video games (i.e. Persona, TWEWY, etc.), and live action anime/movies.

Alright, with all the stereotypes I have cued up now, it’ll only be a matter of time before they’ll be thrown aside or confirmed.

Tags: Anime, holiday, japan, shibuya, twewy

Looking Ahead to 2009

So I recently took an intermediate piano course at one of the Emory campuses just to see where exactly do I stand with the piano. Unfortunately, it didn’t really tell me where I stood, but I did learn a few new things. The class was pretty much half and half for me, in terms of material already known/not known. I originally took it to get some exposure to piano instruction as I’m not formally taught. In addition, hopefully I’ll be able to find a piano teacher for the new year, with the instructor’s help. Hopefully 2009 will be the definitive year for my piano playing.

If I could easily reallocate all my hours of gaming time into piano like respec’ing my mage from frost to arcane, I’d totally have enough talent points to play Gershwin. Of course, that would mean that I wouldn’t know about people like Koji Kondo and Nobuo Uematsu and that would just be tragic.

Tags: classical, google, Music, piano

First Impressions: Persona 4

With the craziness that is this video game season closing to an end on top of the craziness that is the economy, I managed to dodge most of the releases (i.e. Fallout 3, Tales of Vesperia, Eternal Sonata [PS3], Fable 2, and Valkyria Chronicles just to name a few of them). Of course, I’ll have to revisit these games sometime in the future.

In the meantime, I settled for the new World of Warcraft expansion to take over my gaming slot. However, I didn’t think that even WoW would get dethroned by a modest Playstation 2 JRPG.

Actually, I lied. Persona 4 was something I’ve been waiting for ever since I heard it announced and after playing Persona 3.

The best thing about it? It plays almost like Persona 3 (with tweaked mechanics).

I’m currently 40 hours into the game (a bit late for first impressions methinks), and I can safely say I’m almost 3/4 of the way through the game. It’s been eating up my gaming time like nothing else. I would’ve had my very first level 80 by now if it weren’t for this game. Allocating time between this and WoW was just impossible for me.

Of course, in due time, I’ll be back to my regular WoW playing schedule. Until then, I’m going to savor everything that this game has left to offer. I may even pick up Persona 3 Fes for New Game+ since I can’t locate my copy of Persona 3.

Full review comes after I’ve beaten the game. If you liked Persona 3 a lot though, I think it’s safe to say you should pick this game up if the glowing reviews weren’t proof enough of how great this game is.

Tags: p4, persona 4, shin megami tensei, smt

The Dark “Black” Friday

So, Thanksgiving has come and gone and so has the elusive Black Friday. Due to my crowd-spectating tendencies (i.e. Wii debut, iPhone 3G debut, and pretty much almost every previous Black Friday), I couldn’t help but head out and check out the scene. I did manage to get myself to not buy anything for this year’s Black Friday, and a lot of help for that was thanks to World of Warcraft. However, since I was still up at 5am after playing WoW, I decided to just take a drive around and check out some of the retailers.

Despite how downtrodden the economy was, I was surprised at how ridiculously big the turnout still was for Black Friday. Perhaps it might be due to the fact that it’s just that huge to begin with and the absolute threshold was probably huge for me since 1000 people in a lot to me would probably seem as big as 500 people in a lot if I was just looking around.

So what is this dark “Black” Friday? It seems due to the fact that there didn’t seem to be a slowdown for Black Friday, its chaos was just as ridiculous as ever. This year I managed to find people in verbal arguments from their cars in the parking lots, but that hardly holds any water compared to the big-liners of the day.

When demand completely obliterates supply, it seems crazy things can happen. There’s a ton of examples that illustrate this throughout history, so it really came to no surprise for me. It just really sucks that it happened. Also, I don’t know what Wal-mart was thinking, but thinking about it, I think that accident was something that could’ve easily been prevented.

So I managed to get through Black Friday unscathed. Unfortunately, it totally rocked up my sleeping schedule. I ended up staying up the rest of the day and going to bed at around 11pm and sleeping for like 13-15 hours straight.

Lesson of the day is probably to play it safe and just do online shopping instead. The camcorder I’m currently eying for my trip to Japan is actually a lot cheaper online (even had they thrown in shipping and taxes). It seems I’m still a tad old school when it comes to camcorders.

Tags: black friday, canon, cyber monday, economy, hv30, supply and demand, toys r us, wal-mart, walmart, world of warcraft

WoW: WotLK Impressions I

One of the first things I did with the new expansion is to try out the new Death Knight class they had. This meant another newbie zone to go through (except starting out at level 55). I expected the “usual” style of newbie zones, but it seems the developers at Blizzard had other plans.

Don’t get me wrong, by other plans, I meant it in a more storyline presentation/progression kind of way. Leveling up is the same, but what surprised me the most was how they handled the entire area. I won’t try to spoil too much, but if you’re into a mental provocative trip, this may turn out to be pretty interesting. It may not be that provocative, but for an MMORPG, I was content with what I found.

There are spoilers, so turn back now while you can…

You start off right next to the lich king himself. Yes, the bad ass Arthas who your guild is gonna raid after several patches is right in front of you. The newbie zone can’t be accessed by any other means so raiding him then is futile (if not for another reason I’ll explain later on).

You’re in the middle of a war and pretty much most of your quests consist of contributing to that war. What makes it interesting is that because of the natural influx of people, it really feels like a war between the scourge and the good guys. I felt that Blizzard did good in anticipating the overcrowding and fashioning quests to make it feel flow better.

Stepping aside for a moment. If you’ve played Super Columbine Massacre RPG (SCMRPG), there was an element in the game that really impressed me (which made me think that it was one of the reasons why the game made it to the finals of Slamdance before getting pulled because of public pressure). When going through the school, you’ll randomly have to fight against students. The thing was that they wouldn’t fight back (certain types of students would). In a typical RPG, you’re always fighting an enemy that will fight back, but in this case they didn’t. It made sense as to why they didn’t fight back which made the game more emotionally powerful and provocative.

There is a quest in WotLK where you have to kill soldiers as well as citizens. Essentially it’s the same atmosphere like in SCMRPG. They really stick it to you though. Because of everyone doing the quest, while you’re hunting down the citizens, you’ve got all this chaos and screaming going around. It really immerses you into the environment. The citizens, of course, they don’t fight back (some types do). They will also talk to you (curse you, pity you, beg you, etc.) The lich king also will continuously remind you to show no mercy and to kill everyone indiscriminately essentially. There is another quest later on where you are requested to execute someone. It turns out to be someone you knew before your character became a death knight. After dialogue, they don’t fight back and agree that you will have to kill them and hope that you’ll change.

In the end, your character ends up defecting against the lich king (with a little help of some of the storyline characters). You travel back to your hometown where the citizens throw trash at you, curse you, and spit on you while you make your way to the king to inform him of your defection.

Basically, you experience the transformation of a character from mindlessly following the lich king to despising him, defecting and vowing to slay him (the lich king himself used to be good but turned evil).

Another thing that was interesting about it was how after completing certain quests, the area you’re in changes. In technical terms, you’re placed in a different instance of the same area. In the new instance, it shows progression of the war as the Scourge push back the good guys. Basically (beginning of war, chaos, aftermath). Because of this, it effectively helped control the number of people that were in the area. Storyline wise, the lich king ends up running away and abandons the area you started from so even if anyone were to have any access to the area, they would end up seeing the instance of the area where he has run away.

The experience was rather interesting considering I didn’t expect this to happen (as I expected just the typical grinding and moving on). They really made an effort to get you to “hate” the lich king. Hopefully, they have done the same in the other new areas of the game.

Tags: death knight, world of warcraft, wotlk, wow, wrath of the lich king

WoW: WotLK Midnight Release Impressions

So here’s to another successful game acquirement. This time it was World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. The thing is, I don’t believe in pre-ordering anything. For the most part, it’s because it requires one to commit to a vendor, and quite frankly, I have serious commitment issues.

As noted on the official website, this Best Buy location was supposed host the midnight release of the game. It’s smack dab right in the middle of Atlanta too (very accessible from MARTA). It turns out a kink in the process occurred and they weren’t able to do the midnight release (hence the empty parking lot in the photo). It was unfortunate because they essentially funneled all those potential sales to GameStop (where there’s like one every 5 miles or so).

Moving on, my friend and I went to the GameStop (at the Lenox mall) instead. The wait was nothing compared to my last venture at the mall (specifically, the Apple store… for the iPhone). It was a total dwarf compared to my voting experience too. I was slightly disappointed because I was hoping to meet up with some interesting people (tends to happen when you’re in line for a long period of time). I was glad, however, because it was a weekday and skipping classes is a lot easier than skipping work. I would’ve set aside days off, but I had already done that for a particular RPG coming out in December (and to give me extra rest time before Japan).

Mission was a success and so was the installation/logging on. I was surprised how smoothly this all went (considering some disasters I’ve run into on various debut releases). Points for Blizzard on that.

Because WoW is such a massive game that I feel deserves a lot of attention (in terms of discussion/criticism/etc.), the next few posts will be dedicated to WoW.

Tags: best buy, gamestop, midnight, wotlk, wow

WoW… Just WoW

After yet another bout of leaving the realm of Azeroth, I’ve finally come to terms with my inner Frostmourne and have shattered the ice that have kept my account frozen all this time. In simple terms, I’m playing World of Warcraft again.

The character actually isn’t level 47 anymore. They’re level 55 as of now (the image is just from something I made back in the day. I don’t even think that ranking system exists anymore). My highest level character is 67 on a different server.

It isn’t to say I hate World of Warcraft for bringing me back. Hell, I wished I would’ve been addicted to the game all this time. As a gamer, it would’ve been very economical. The problem is that spending so much of my gaming time in World of Warcraft could be invested in other games that have been coming out. As a gamer knowledgeable in the industry, I like to try out new things that are coming out. Playing only one game for a long time doesn’t really appeal to me. Because of this, it is also why downloadable content (DLC) doesn’t appeal to me either (the ones that are meant to prolong the lifetime of a game). Games like Rock Band are an exception.

Actually, one of the metrics I use for judging whether or not a game is good is by whether I finish a game (usually RPGs, Action/Adventure) or how often I go back to it (fighting, rhythm, FPS, etc.)

So many good games out there, yet so little time to get to them all. As for this fall, though, I plan on gaming it up with the new World of Warcraft expansion (coming in a day) up until the release of Chrono Trigger DS and Persona 4 (coming in November/December).

Fact: I’m the type of person that will set aside days off from work to dedicate it to a game (usually RPGs).

Tags: gaming, Video Games, world of warcraft, wow

Election Countdown

It seems that there’s a day left before what is to potentially be the most important election ever (boosted by the types of candidates we have and the current state of the… well, United States).

I think that no matter the decision, this’ll be a rather interesting election and term come January.

I’m still split on who to vote for though. If I really did think hard enough, I do have a slight affinity for one over the other, but needless to say it isn’t enough to make me want to vote for them considering that my favor for them isn’t significant.

Perhaps they should have a co-presidency. A hybrid of a president… President Johrack Obacain.

Hopefully with all the polls opening tomorrow, it won’t be as hell as it was for the early voting. Sitting in line for 6+ hours to vote? Geez. Last time I did something like that, I scored a Nintendo Wii for the wait. At a different time, I scored Georgia/Georgia Tech tickets.

Tags: election, long lines, mccain, obama

Politics: One Party “Two” Much?

I remember waaaaay back when I was in high school that I read about something that caught my interest (long enough for me to remember what it was). It wasn’t this exact quote, as I forgot what quote it was, but it was from George Washington’s Farewell Address. Ironically, it was the last one or two lines of the chapter we were reading so I found it interesting that it was actually something I remembered.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

From memory, I believe that Washington was discussing the potential repercussions of a two party system and that it creates a sense of fanboyism, if you will. Considering what I’ve seen what fanboyism does to video game consoles, I’m not surprised of its similar effects in this two party system.

And yeah, I think this two party system is lame and needs to be ridded of. Maybe one day a decision to vote for a president will be done from judging his visions and character as opposed to his party affiliation.

Tags: democrat, politics, president, republican