• 11May 13

  Good news for any Valkyria Chronicles fan

  

  Remember when I said the only thing I didn't have to do with Valkyria Chronicles 2 was that I hadn't read the Aliasse's Blue Flame manga?

  No, of course you don't.

  But anyway... every once in a while I search Valkyria Chronicles 2 on Google. Partly to find new fan art, and partly to flip the middle finger to anyone b****ing about my lovely game.

  And I found that the Aliasse's Blue Flame manga has been translated.

  I'm exceedingly happy.

  

  So this is good news for any Valkyria Chronicles fan.

  The real ones anyway, not those pesky stuck up bass tards who are still whining desperately that Valkyria Chronicles 2 should have been on the PS3, or that its story is not good, or that its graphics aren't, or this, or that... To me, people like that are honestly the lowest forms of life. Lower than prokaryotes.

  So a few fan arts of Aliasse to redeem an otherwise utter failure of a blog...

  

  

  

  I guess that's it.

  Goodbye.

  • Posted May 11, 2013 3:46 am GMT
  • Category: General
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• 29Apr 13

  How a user's reviews change over time.

  Let's think, and do a serious blog for once.

  I am not going to talk about stuff like, 'GameSpot's reviewers are so harsh - So-and-so game deserves a better score!' That's been talked about enough and it's quite possible that while I get away with criticizing a certain reviewer on Fuse, it'd be much more moderation-prone to post a blog saying how I have to cry myself to sleep regularly because that certain reviewer gave Persona 2: Innocent Sin a 5.0.

  One of my favourite things about GameSpot is that you can post user reviews for almost any game, whether GameSpot reviewed it or not, whether it's well-known or not. The review system got an overhaul before I started reviewing, making it more 'compact' and allowing scores only in increments of 0.5 and getting rid of the silly system of rating things like graphics, gameplay and value separately.

  In an effort to improve the quality of user reviews Gamespot has an emblem for the Top 100 and Top 500 User Reviewers and it really worked! The users nominated there (by the users - this is democracy) really did write excellent reviews. Yet one thing I keep noticing is that even the reviewers who later went on to achieve greatness, like benleslie5 in my opinion, were at the start very enthusiastic and .... um...

  Over time, our reviews tend to get longer, more descriptive and more harsh.

  When I started reviewing, I had so many exclamation marks in my review for English of the Dead that when I look back on it, I think, "Was I high?" Then as I started to review more regularly I became 'that' kind of reviewer, the kind that isn't out to make friends, makes some people emotionally shattered by giving the game they loved a low score, though like the GameSpot reviewers, I wasn't always harsh. My review of Scarface: The World is Yours  is probably the one I'm most proud of. When a game deserves a perfect score, it gets it.

  A lot of people think that to be a respectable reviewer, you have to be a robotic, mention-by-way-of-example kind of person and you can never give a game a perfect score 'because nothing is perfect.'  Of course nothing is perfect, but even the 'harsh' GameSpot reviewers give a game a 10 if it's close to perfection. I was like that too, and I did the unforgiveable - I gave Valkyria Chronicles 2 a 9.5 instead of the 10 it so deserved. (I eventually did change my score to 10 ) As for being serious in a review, Alex Navarro categorically proved that you can be funny and still give an excellent review. And humorous reviewers are always more popular anyway, or Destructoid would have gone bust long ago

  There's an in-between which is the right way to review a game. Have an appropriate dose of humour (if the game is really bad, have an excess), give the game the score you truly feel it deserves and divide your review into the parts you're going to describe: gameplay, story, graphics, sound and presentation. There's no clear boundary between these parts but describing each of these things in turn is easier on the reader's mind.

  So my point is, if you're a new reviewer and feel you're not good enough, or you look back on your old reviews and are embarassed, a lot of people are like that. The one uniting factor among all us reviewers is Street Cleaning Simulator 

  • Posted Apr 29, 2013 4:21 am GMT
  • Category: Editorial
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• 26Apr 13

  How I've spent the past ten days.

  My life is back on track after my exams ended. I am much happier and less serious now, and I have all day to spend gaming or on Fuse. My damaged sense of humour is getting even more damaged trying to repair itself, and FINALLY Black Rock Shooter for the PSP got released on the PSN.

  New games:

  I finally got my grubby hands on Black Rock Shooter!

  

  The character voices are in Japanese, but the menus and subtitles are in English. It's weird they spent a year and a half localizing it and in the end translated only the text but I guess they know only Japanophiles will buy games like this now. The graphics are good though they could have been better, the music and gameplay are excellent and from the first mission this game had that certain endearing nostalgic quality that I associate with early PS2 games. All in all it's awesome and anyone with a PSP should get it.

  I also got these games, all for the PSP. I got Gun Showdown from my friend who's been bastardized by the Xbox 360 and no longer cares for such good consoles as the PSP. Ain't I cruel to people who are nice to me?

  

  All of them are great except Strikers 1945 (my review) and Cho Aniki Zero is just decent. Cho Aniki Zero is a creepy game so avoid it if you're not a bullet hell fan. By the way, Disgaea Infinite and Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel are visual novels, since of course the traditional novel is outdated (JK). Technology I've had Persona 2 for a quite a while actually, so it isn't actually 'new' but I only started playing it for real yesterday and besides, I wanted to fill out the space.

  I also got Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy for the 3DS.

  

  Old games:

  These are the games I've already played, that I busy myself in:

  

  Yeah, I love my PSP. I haven't finished Persona 3 Portable yet but it's already become one of my favourite PSP games.

  Movies:

  I had planned to watch all the CGI game based movies I could find for a while, and gladly all of them were good. I haven't watched Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and that's next on my list.

  

  Apart from this I watched the only two Pakistani movies that were famous internationally.

  

  Khuda Kay Liye is about how extremists present their own interpretation of Islam causing the religion to be thought of as a 'give yourself suffering, no joy' religion by many and the mistaken perceptions Americans and Muslims had of each other after 9/11. Bol is about a man who wants a son but after many daughters, gets a transgendered son instead due to which he makes his whole family suffer. Both of them are excellent films, though Khuda Kay Liye is better and is one of my favourite films

  So, this is what I've spent all the past ten days doing. What about you guys? What have you been up to?

  • Posted Apr 26, 2013 3:09 am GMT
  • Category: Games
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