Magnum's Corner

SToled

2010-01-04T22:55:40Z

Lying quiz lies. It must. XD

New Year

2009-12-31T23:28:41Z

Yay for 2009 going the hell away. This year sucked. Completely. Except for some of the games that got released. And even then, they don't exactly made the year good.

So anyway, New Year's resolutions:

1. Finish that book of mine. (50,000 words or so into it, so yay!)

2. Finish Broken Dreams.

3. Try that fiction posting/game reviews/gaming thoughts blog idea, and attempt to make some money with my massive amounts of free time. Maybe post my book on there since I think the auidence is probably limited. Would depend on if I could get Google Ads on it and promote the heck out of it or not.

So yeah, here's hoping 2010 is better than 09.

custom_magnum @ 2009-12-29T16:36:00

2009-12-29T21:37:10Z

Did something to my hand while I was unloading the dishwasher and it hurts like heck now. And it's making typing up this post to complain about it a pain.

So much for working on writing or Kotoha or Hikari's apps later. Going to go take some pain meds and see if that helps.

custom_magnum @ 2009-12-26T13:36:00

2009-12-26T18:36:49Z

Well, Christmas this year was alright. Got Infamous for PS3 and The Legend of Zelda, Spirit Tracks for the DS.

Haven't opened Spirit Tracks or the three games I got myself yet, and played Infamous... pretty much all day yesterday. I think I'm going to need a few icons of Cole for this once again Paid account when I'm not feeling lazy.

Job hunt anger

2009-12-22T23:31:08Z

Okay, you know, at this point if I wasn't on unemployment, I'd just give the fuck up on my job search.

Seriously, got an e-mail from Wendy's about oh, five minutes after applying there online that basically boils down to "Thanks for you interest, now go the fuck away."

Really makes me wonder why the fuck I even bother if I'm not even qualified for there.

custom_magnum @ 2009-11-10T21:01:00

2009-11-11T02:04:05Z

I was going to steal a meme from digidragon. Then I realized that I already did it.

So umm... Here you go flist:

EDIT:

Okay, since the links are being bastards, screw it I'll repost the meme. Only had one tag in it last time anyway.

Give me a fandom (or more) and I'll return to you:
1. One True Pairing Ship
2. Canon Ship
3. "If this happens I'll stab my eyes out with a spork" Ship
4. "You are one sick bastard" Ship
5. "I dabble a little" Ship
6. "It's like a car crash" Ship
7. "Tickles my fancy but not sold just yet" Ship
8. "Makes no canon sense but why the Hell not" Ship
9. "Everyone else loves it but I just don't feel it" Ship

custom_magnum @ 2009-11-04T17:12:00

2009-11-04T22:14:16Z

Cracked open the big Beginning Ruby book I bought almost a year ago again. Hopefully my desire to teach myself some form of programming will last AND I'll get the idea about using RPG Maker VX to make an RPG game by myself out of my system.

Misc stuff

2009-10-29T19:37:56Z

I've come to a conclusion this week.

I need to get a job. Sure, I'm getting umemployment but being home all day every day is making me beat all the unbeaten video games I have a little too fast. Beat Chrono Trigger DS yesterday, just have some of the side crap left to do.

Also, I need to fight off the urge to buy RPG Maker XP/VX. I need to work on a novel and finish that first, since there's actual money that might come from that. Maybe. I can hope. Also, I remember how trying to make games alone worked the LAST time I tried it. -_-. Don't really want to do that again.

Yet one idea keeps NAGGING at me.

Latest episode of Heroes

2009-10-27T01:18:47Z

Wow. It's the first time in history of reading/watching fiction ever that I can actually scream out "I KNEW IT!" in my head in regards of what the hell is going to happen in fiction.

custom_magnum @ 2009-10-24T16:22:00

2009-10-24T20:23:09Z

Is it bad that now that I finished watching Digimon Adventure, my muses are immediately going "Watch 02/Tamers/Frontier/Savers and write that crossover fic idea you have!"?

The Force Unleashed: Special Ripoff Edition

2009-10-22T03:35:12Z

Okay. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Pretty decent and fun game overall, if really WAY to short to justify it's original $60 asking price that I paid for it back when it first came out. Even though I'm starting to get the itch to replay it again, actually doing that still wouldn't give me the value of some other games, as it'd only be around 22 hours at max. Even the additional Downloadable Content (DLC) level released around half a year ago or so only adds so much to the game.

But with the announcement of the Ultimate Sith Edition of the game, Lucas Arts is now taking all the fans who bought the game on the PS3 or Xbox360, and castrating them with a blood red lightsaber. And the only reason I can see for them doing it is to be dicks, really. That or with the creation of it as the Ultimate Sith Edition the company has completely embraced the Sith ideology of “being a completely jackass to everyone else on the planet”.

For those who don't know, the new edition of the Force Unleashed, the Ultimate Sith Edition will include the main game, the first DLC expansion level, both DLC costume packs, the second just released DLC Expansion level of the Sith ending of the game in part of an AU “What If?” springing from said ending, and a new EXCLUSIVE level continuing from that second DLC level of the game. That you can't get as DLC. This exclusive level is supposed to be a selling point of the Ultimate Sith Edition. There's been at least one person actually agreeing with them not allowing the last level to be DLC as a way to convince newcomers to the game to buy a new disc of it instead of buying a cheap used copy for $20.00, despite how much it pisses of the people who actually bought the game when it first came out (subnet6's comments on this kotaku thread).

But that doesn't even fly. In fact, the list price on Amazon.com for the game BEFORE they reduce it slightly is $39.99. While at the very least LucasArt's isn't trying to get people, especially people who bought the game already to pay a full $60... in actuality it turns out that there's little rational reason for them to NOT release the Hoth level as DLC.

Let's go through the list of all the DLC that's available for The Force Unleashed.

1.)Apprentice Mission Pack (additional level) - $9.99
2.)Character Pack 1 (additional costumes) - $4.99
3.)Character Pack 2 (additional costumes) - $4.99
4.)Tatooine Mission Pack (additional level) - $9.99

So, adding all those nice numbers together and we get $29.96.

$10 less than the Ultimate Sith Edition's full price. And since the only thing exclusive to it it will have is the single Hoth Level, then going by the pricing point of the previous two mission packs and adding another $9.99 to the pricing and we get... $39.95.

So basically, by LucasArts making the Hoth Level exclusive to the Ultimate Sith Edition... they're castrating the fanbase for a measly four pennies per copy, if they actually go out and buy the Ultimate Sith Edition just because it's Star Wars.

I'm not saying that LucasArts SHOULDN'T make a re-release for $39.99 that includes all the DLC. That's perfectly fine. I'm not even annoyed that the people who buy the game later get it for less money. That's the nature of the business, after all. But by deliberately witholding the level, they're being a bunch of greedy dicks to the fanbase.

For four messily pennies. In fact, even if the Ultimate Sith Edition was out and new players STILL bought used copies of the game, unless they completely hated it, those gamers would probably want more and would end up buying the DLC, thereby giving LucasArts the full price they were asking for the Ultimate Sith Edition ANYWAY.

Any plans I'd have to become a game developer I think I'm going to throw away right now. If this is the kind of crap I'd be expected to take part in I'd want nothing of it.

As far as I understood, DLC was supposed to STOP the bullshit of making a better version of the game a year or two down the road and trying to charge gamers who already bought the game more money for it. Yet The Ultimate Sith edition is not the only case of this happening. Just take a look at Street Fighter IV and Super Street Fighter IV, the new version of the game that's going to be released soon for $39.99. All the new version of Street Fighter IV is going to have is more characters, some more moves for characters, and bug fixes (Destructoid). While that might seem like a lot of content, it wouldn't be like all that extra stuff couldn't be made available as patches via download for that game. While Capcom is notorious for doing this exact thing, that was always in the ages before DLC became possible on consoles.

Seriously, enough is enough with this crap.

Google Adsense/My Ads + Fanfic = ????

2009-09-25T22:13:39Z

So, Livejournal has a new ad feature, do they. It's a rather interesting prospect, especially with all those “success” stories about people who are able to live off of ads from Google Adsense, Google's “Put ads on your site relative to your site's content and pay you money for it!” And now it's available for paid Livejournal accounts. So wouldn't this be a good prospect? Not only can a user get paid for doing memes on their journal, but actually having ads on it should make updates more frequent for the blogs in question with the ads, shouldn't they?

It should, yes. But there's one very significant reason why as of yet this blog has not had the My Ads enabled. And that is fanfiction.

Fanfiction has always been supposedly about writing about stories and worlds that the writer cares about, for no profit at all. And yet, by placing Google Adsense ads on a site that hosts fanfiction and have it not be part of the cost for getting free webspace on a server somewhere... isn't that what we'd be doing? Making a profit off something that we'd always claim we were doing for free and not trying to make a profit.

And yet, Fanfiction.net has ads and have had ads for a while. But unlike Livejournal, Fanfiction.net does not give users the option to pay for space on their site and then put on ads to make money.

And fanfiction is probably going to be the reason that the ads that are soon to grace this blog are going to be because I'm downgrading to a plus account, rather than me risking a massive explosion by putting ads that I'd make money from on a place where I post fanfiction.

Of course, I've thought about using Google Adsense for eventually original fiction distributed online on a site before Livejournal added that feature, so hey, I may end up getting a new journal in the future just for that to see how well it could work out. Or maybe I'll be lucky and be able to get it released as a real book. Who knows?

... probably time to get an VGA cable for the netbook

2009-09-12T21:16:32Z

So... my main laptop with the decent sized screen is starting to fall apart. Not in the whole "lol all the comp parts of this are shit and I've already replaced the harddrive". I mean in that it's FALLING APART.

And it was perfectly fine yesterday and I haven't dropped it at all, but each time I go to open it part of the casing starts to pop open.

I guess if I never close the thing again I should be able to manage for a bit, and it's not like I don't have a netbook, but that screen and keyboard? For use all the time. God.

... If I had a job I'd just invest in a VGA cable, wireless keyboard and wireless mouse and be done with it, but... yeah...

Walgreens online app

2009-09-04T20:52:45Z

Walgreens? Yeah, you know those positions you have listed for your store. You know, the ones that AREN'T going to need me to be in school for six years to be able to do. Like say, Cashier or Photo Specialist?

... Actually having them selectable on your application would be most appreciated. Just FYI.

Disney takes Marvel, Checkmate

2009-08-31T17:06:23Z

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/94313-Disney-to-Buy-Marvel-Comics - I'm finding the forum posts to this topic hilarious, I have to say.

Also, for the WITCH/KH fic I started writing about... yesterday? I need to thrown Spider-Man in somehow.

Masked Rider Kabuto

2009-08-25T20:44:47Z

So, saw the first episode of the Philippines dubbed Kamen Rider Kabuto today.

And they picked the most perfect cast ever. Tendou sounds like a dick. Hiyori sounds as shy as she is. Kagami's as much of an eager young man as he was in the original first episode. Everyone's voices are perfect.

Of course, the English dialogue doesn't fit the mouth movements... but at least the dialogue doesn't play when the mouths aren't moving. Then again, I doubt any SERIOUS dub had that problem, but it's still something.

Of course, since this is a Dub and not an adaption like Dragon Knight is to Ryuki... well... all the problems present in the Japanese version of Kabuto ~~(None of the riders until Gatack appears being likable and Thirty Xanatos Pileup to the point of stupidity)~~are going to be present here, unfortunately. Of course, that's not the DUBBERS fault.

So... if RPM actually ends up being the last Power Rangers season, we need to get this dubbing company to dub and bring Shinkenger. And somehow get it brought over to the US. The kids must NOT be deprived of awesome Samuari Rangers!

Kamen Rider Black

2009-08-19T22:25:48Z

So, I started watching Kamen Rider Black today, and my first reaction?

The effects and flim quality is so unbelievable crappy.

It wasn't until the first henshin scene happened and I remembered that the show is AS OLD AS I AM that I started to feel better and start enjoying it.

Kamen Rider Ryuki, Kabuto, Kiva, Decade? Your shiny shiny shiny picture quality has spoiled me.

custom_magnum @ 2009-08-14T19:24:00

2009-08-14T23:29:25Z

Okay, just updated Broken Dreams Chapter 30. I'm going to TRY to make Friday my update day from now on, but I'm a flake when it comes to actually making the update. If only fanfiction.net had an option where you can upload the files and have them automatically update in sequence on a certain day. Or a program that can do that for LJ posts.

Maybe I should look into it. Would certainly make things a little bit EASIER on me, that's for sure.

That said, I absolutely NEED to make sure I get to editing chapters 31 and 32 this week, and FINALLY get started on Chapter 33. I've been meaning too for the last few weeks, but the internets being available EVERYWHERE I bring the Acer don't really seem to be helping me all that much.

Damn it, I miss having my job. The money and the hour long lunch break was pretty much the only thing that was keeping my writing at a constant rate. If I ever want to write an ACTUAL, ORIGINAL book, I'm going to have to discipline myself better.

custom_magnum @ 2009-06-19T11:03:00

2009-06-19T15:07:46Z

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/92514-Montana-City-Wants-Your-Facebook-Information

Seriously government? What the fuck? Okay, asking for what the account name is is one thing, but passwords as well?

I'll just be glad I A.) Work for a Private corporation and B.) Don't live in Montana.

Netbook is still awesome

2009-06-06T01:55:48Z

Okay, the Acer is probably the best purchase I've made with my money in a good long while. In addition to letting me get back to my writing and have a higher productivity than I did back when I just wrote on paper at work (if last week is any indication, about 1500 words a day, and 2 and a half chapters of Broken Dreams a week), it is now doubling as a wireless adapter for my 360, since Timer Warner replaced the modem up here for the ones with one that can't give ethernet connections to things, and it would cost $45 a month to enable that. Or $100 for the Wireless adapter that Microsoft sells.

Or nothing, as it turns out. ^__^

New Computer

2009-05-15T13:11:17Z

I now have an Acer Aspire One netbook.

Expect a general increase in fanfic, original fic, and blog post productivity.

You know, unless Wal-Mart has wifi that I can get on with this computer. Then well... yeah, that'll probably not work.

Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon...

2009-05-09T03:48:22Z

... is easily the weakest of the Fire Emblem games released outside of Japan by far. Even allowing for the fact that it's a remake of a twenty year old game... it's just... kinda meh, actually. It's still some fun, but games don't necessarily have to be great to be fun. And this is coming from someone who played the game all day today and got up to chapter 17 or so. Out of 24.

The Story... well... honestly? Is an excuse plot. There's no character development what-so-ever, and there is no reason to like Marth or anyone else. The support conversations between characters that actually gave some development to the characters? Gone, although apparently the supports are still present. Not that the game gives you any mention of this, mind. Add this to the fact that Marth and two NPCs are the only characters who have dialogue after they're introduced... and this isn't including the playable character that Marth's apparently supposed to marry in the future. And to make this worse? The game practically vomits characters on you every single chapter; I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Shadow Dragon has the largest cast of characters to date.

Assuming that's a problem with the original game... there's really no excuse. This is the SECOND time the first Fire Emblem has had a remake, and the first time they did it they added a whole other game to it. Which is absent from Shadow Dragon.

Honestly, I can't fathom why Intelligent Systems didn't go all out with this game. Not only were the games fans looking forward to it because, god damnit we can finally play a Fire Emblem game with Marth in it... and we get this.

One of the things done right in this game is that they brought back the Forge at least, which allows you to make awesome weapons of death from an Iron Sword that's almost as strong as a Silver Sword, weighs nothing, and has a 1/3 chance of a critical hit. There's also a new feature called Reclassing... which lets you change the class of any unit to a different class, which is useful in the cases where you end up having a character that belongs to a certain class killed and still have like... 5 Cavaliers around (which you will, mind). But even so, the fact that these features were added in just makes the support conversations being taken away seem like more of a let down than it already was.

All in all, Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon is an okay game, but even so... I'm surprised if I could say it was worth $30, and I'm glad that I have Gamefly, otherwise I WOULD'VE paid that much for the game. Since this turned into a review instead of me just bitching about the game not being anywhere as good as the previous ones I've played, if you've never played a Fire Emblem game before, then go for either Fire Emblem on the GBA, Sacred Stones also on the GBA, or Path of Radiance for the Gamecube if you can find them. Radiant Dawn's also good, but most new players are going to probably destroy a TV or three trying to play it.

Mags decides he can review stuff: Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles Review

2009-01-25T02:18:40Z

Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles. A rail shooter, otherwise known as the genre of game that there should be nine hundred eleventy billion of on the Wii but there inexplicably aren't. It's the perfect game for the system, so it's no surprise that someone decided to make one.

But I'm supposed to be talking about Umbrella Chronicles right now, not rail shooters, so I should probably get on that before I start shooting at Namco Bandai to release Wii versions of Time Crisis games so I won't have to buy 2 copies of it to allow two player gun shooting mode... if I had anyone I played multi-player games with at home anyway.

Basically, Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles makes you play as various Resident Evil characters in stages based on various Resident Evil games. RE0, the remake of 1, and 3 are all included in it, as is a single stage where you play as RE2's Ada, in a baffling show of stupidity. Resident Evil 2 was one of the most awesome games in the series, and to see it almost completely neglected by this celebration of the series history is almost like a kick in the balls to that game. The absence of Code Veronica stages in the game is just as bad, although if they weren't adding RE2 than putting Code Veronica in would be more baffling. The only reason I could think for this is that Capcom is cheap and doesn't want to pay Leon and Claire's voice actors for another job since they needed to be paid for Degeneration. Still, it's positively annoying. The game also includes a brand new storyline section where you storm an Umbrella Facility as the last thing that happens before the Umbrella Corporation is destroyed.

That said, as a rail shooter, gameplay is simple. Point Wiimote at screen, press trigger button to kill things and break objects, while a separate action button can be used to pick up health, ammo, and hidden documents throughout the stages. Holding down this action button also allows you to swing the Wiimote to use the combat knife to slash incoming creatures or press the trigger button to throw a grenade at a horde of zombies to make them explode. Swinging the Wiimote without pressing the action button makes you reload your currently equipped weapon, a much less fun looking but much more often used function.

The game also supports usage of the Wii Zapper, Nintendo's official Light Gun casing accessory for the Wii Remote, and because of that Third-Party Light Gun accessory's can also be used as well. Personally, I was using the Nyko Perfect Shot, as it was A.) Shaped like a handgun instead of the... toy thing that the Zapper is B.) The internets like the Perfect Shot better than the Zapper, and C.) The Wii Zapper is near impossible to find where I live now that Christmas is over and the Wal-Mart I work at no longer has eleventy-billion of them. Having the game set to the Wii Zapper settings changes the action button from 'A' to 'Z', and let's you swipe the nunchuk to reload and use the knife instead of the Wiimote, which makes maintaining your target much much easier.

The game is fun as heck, but there are a few annoying things about it. For starters, the games difficulty levels are “Sledgehammer to Balls”, “Rocket to your Face followed by a sledgehammer to the Balls”, and most probably, “Get torn apart and have the zombies play soccer with your nads and head”. Now, those aren't the actual difficulty names, but they're a lot more accurate than the games names of “Easy, Normal, and Hard”. Now I'm all for games having challenge, but the Easy difficulty shouldn't have bosses that murder you in five seconds... although those were in the last few stages of the game, so those might be excusable for having to fight them about a billion times before managing to shoot them in the head enough times to kill them and win by only having 1 hitpoint left. Then again Devil May Cry 4 didn't have that problem on Normal, so why does this game have it on easy?

Then there's also the ranking system, and the fact that certain scenarios... Nightmare 2 and Death's Door, specifically, are only unlocked by getting an 'A' rank or better on certain scenario's. Needless to say, it's positively annoying replaying a stage over and over again because I didn't break enough objects, blow off enough Zombies' heads, or collect enough documents because I was too busy trying to keep the Nemesis from tentacle raping Jill Valentine through the face. Now, those hidden scenarios having to be unlocked like this wouldn't be a problem if they were secret stages and not needed to be beaten to get access to the actual last stage of the game in the Umbrella's End/Dark Legacy scenarios... which are the real reason most people are playing this game other than being Resident Evil fans, since if we wanted to re-experience the story of the other Resident Evil games... we'd probably just play the Resident Evil games. Well, that and the extra missions where you get to be Wesker and kill things... like the Dark Legacy scenarios.

... Thinking about it, if they really wanted to do a fall of Umbrella game, they should've just made it an action game where you star as Wesker punching the crap out of monsters. Him using a gun AFTER he becomes super-powered human-virus man is just plain silly. They could make it with the Devil May Cry engine and could still call it Resident Evil...

... and I'm going on a tangent again. Point is, having to replay the same stages multiple times in order to get a scenario is a pain in the ass, and if you happen to be a player that wants 100% completion... you're going to have to S Rank all the stages on... Hard. I'd use my name for it, but I've already forgotten what I called the difficulty level I didn't play and am too lazy to go up a few clicks and look it up. Plus Hard gets the point across faster after I defined it.

Plus I'm stupidly trying to be funny AND informative with the review here so now I'll just stop typing. This game is definitely worth a rental, but after that it's up to you to decide if you want to spend $30-$50 bucks on it. ~~BUY IT!~~

custom_magnum @ 2008-12-13T11:52:00

2008-12-13T16:54:16Z

You know, I have to say, finding every PS3 game that sorta interests me but I'm not completely sold on getting yet with a downloadable demo is pretty nice.

Now I just need to wait for it and my Force Unleashed DLC to download before playing them.

custom_magnum @ 2008-11-29T21:37:00

2008-11-30T02:39:33Z

Hmm... you know, it occurs to me that most of my post on this livejournal are just things that are locked to my prereaders as drafts of Broken Dreams stuff.

Maybe I should eventually type some of the OTHER fics I've written in the past year that weren't done for a challenge...