Get Watered!

Around Aberystwyth, I see a lot of adverts that bear the image of a glass of water, and the slogan, “Get watered, not slaughtered!”. It’s part of the drink aware campaign. There’s also the one that tells us to not rape women while drunk. (Well. Not to make perverted comments anyway)

But it’s the water that I’m more interested in. Every Thursday night for me is Maths Soc night. No maths is actually involved, unless we talk about the lectures. Most of the time we just drink. In at least five different pubs a night. And usually, I get nice and drunk, and the next morning I feel fine. I’m mixing drinks as well. What some people call “lethal combinations”. But I can still drink that much and be at a 9AM lecture the next day. Maybe a *little* rough, but it’s something I can ignore, and a lot of people wonder how I do it.

Mostly, I imagine it’s because I’m a large person. I absorb the alcohol like a sponge and let it out again slowly. But there are many people with similar body masses who get terrible hangovers. So there must be other factors.

This brings be to the whole water thing. Every now and then on a night out, I drink some water. All pubs will give you a glass of it for free. It may not taste overly nice at times, but it’ll make you feel better in the morning. Other soft drinks work, but water is the better option.

There is also the option of food. Going for a Kebab can be a good idea. Something with some fat in it, preferably, but just something will help. I personally go with a pizza. Doing so will also make you feel a little better the next morning.

That’s how I do it personally. It’s not hard, and it’s cheap. You could of course just not drink alcohol, but then nights out wouldn’t be as interesting. Or as tasty.

The 4 heroes of angst

It’s a bit different I have to say. The 4 Heroes of light feels like an older game, most comparable with Final Fantasy III. Four youths come together, and discover that they are the four heroes of light destined to fight evil. However, instead of sticking together throughout the game, the heroes instantly split up. Not by some natural disaster, but by personal differences. They’re always leaving each other behind and going off on their own. Which fits in with the story of “blossoming friendship and bonds of trust”.

Their mood also comes through in the battle system. As you fight, depending on how the battles going, your team will either feel psyched up, or depressed. Psyched up characters get a stat boost, and attack in tandem with other characters in a good mood to pull of powerful combo attacks. However, depressed characters will get a stat reduction, and will stay like that for a while. Making it hard for you to win unless you fight better.

The battle system is different to other Final Fantasy’s. Each turn, you get one action point (AP) Which is used to attack. Attacks, items and basic abilities cost one AP to use, while magic can cost two. You can also use boost where you spend a turn doing nothing, but gain more AP. The old job system has also received a makeover in the form of crowns. Wearing different crowns gives you access to different abilities and traits. Black and white mages will find have reduced AP cost’s for their magic’s, while bards can sing stat boosting songs. Each crown can be upgraded 3 times with use of gems.

Gems are dropped after every battle. However, they are also your main source of income, as monsters don’t drop gil. So you have to decide whether getting better equipment or more abilities is the priority.

A big issue is the item system. You only get 15 item slots per character. 4 of these slots will be taken up with equipment, and then more will be taken up with spell books. Leaving very little room for potions or phoenix downs. There is a storage system, but you can only access this in towns, and there’s no way of sending things there out in the open, so if your hunting for items, you have to leave space, making things very restricted.

This however adds some challenge to the game.  Most standard foes are tough to beat unless you have the right equipment, and the elemental system is more pronounced than in other games. Knowing where you’re going and what you’re about to fight is very important, and you may die the first time because you didn’t have the right elemental protection.

Overall, the game is great. The graphical style (dubbed “storybook” style) has great charm and fits nicely on the DS’s graphical system. The game never gets too tedious and has enough to keep people going for a while. Get this if you enjoy the side Final Fantasy games.

Quoniam cum probatus fuerit accipient coronam vitae

In an earlier post, I mentioned a friend had given me some nice tasty anime to watch. Two set was half of hellsing ultimate, (which I need to find the rest of) and Elfin Lied.

Hellsing ultimate isn’t as heavy on the plot as other anime. A plot does exist however. An increase of vampires and ghouls has been noticed. And the Hellsing Corporation are one of few people who can fight back with the good old beat fire with fire method. They have their own vampire who was created by Hellsing and exists as the most powerful vampire. Alucard (which in case you hadn’t noticed is “Dracula” backwards) is the vampire in question. Who in the first episode converts another girl to the night. Vampires can only turn virgins of the opposite gender into vampires. Others become Ghouls. Same sort of thing, but rather mindless minions of the vampire who ate them.

Soon we discover the cause of the vampire increase. Nazis have been lying in wait, making vampires and getting ready to fight again. Nazi vampires. It doesn’t get any better. And as expected in an anime about vampires there’s a lot of blood. The main colour is red. Red everywhere. Paper cuts could kill with the amount of blood that comes out. More than is probably possible to fit in a human. It’s entertain fun is you like vampires beating the shit out of each other. And let’s be honest, why wouldn’t you.

Elfin Lied is much more plot focused. It follows Kohta, a boy who gets wrapped up in the affairs of an organisation studying and preventing the evolution of mankind, named Diclonius. Shown as usually having pink hair, horns, invisible hands known as “vectors” and commonly being female. One escapes the facility and ends up living with Kohta. However, she has a split personality. One being innocent and little to no language or other basic capabilities, and the other being violent and murderous.

This too, has lots of blood. The Diclonius waste no time in tearing limbs and heads from torsos to get at their goal. However, there are also a lot of boobs. No matter what their age is, at one point or another, Diclonius are shown completely naked. And it’s not even a sexual thing. It just happens. Any sexual references are either complex incestuous feelings, or awkward moments shown in a comedic manner.

As the story goes on, you realise that there’s a lot more going on than you thought. And events shown in the past have a massive relation to the present events. You don’t get the full story straight away. You get shown parts of flashbacks, only getting the full effect when it becomes relevant. It keeps you guessing. And Kohta definitely had an interesting past. We know that his father and sister are dead, but we don’t know how and apparently he doesn’t remember. It’s a learning experience from both ends.

But still. His main love interest is his cousin. I guess that’s just what happens in Japan.

The mind wipes would have slightly sexual undertones.

A friend came up with an interesting idea the other day. It struck me as rather odd at first, but I grew to like the idea. Dollhouse as an anime.

To be fair, he came up with the idea by pure accident. It was actually more of an assumption. The story goes like this. We had swapped some viewing material. I got some anime (which I’ll talk about in a separate post) and the IT crowd. In return he got FMA, Angel, Firefly and Dollhouse. Mostly Whedon stuff. He knew what Firefly and angel was, but not what Dollhouse was.

When I try and explain what a show is about, I usually try and avoid the main plot lines. Most of the enjoyment I get from a show comes from plot revelations. Mostly the ones that fill my brain with fuck. And Whedon is very good at doing this. Dollhouse follows the story of Echo. A doll at the dollhouse where she takes on assignments by being imprinted with different personalities. Not just acting, changing the memories and habits so that echo fully believes she is who she’s supposed to be. However, unlike other dolls at the dollhouse, she turns out to be a bit different. And it’s how she develops that’s so interesting.

Now, while I was explaining this to my friend, He had thought it was an anime until I said Joss Whedon. At which point he went “an anime by Joss Whedon?” Not only would I like to see an anime directed by Joss Whedon, but admittedly, dollhouse does sound a little like the title of an anime. And anything can work. It might be in danger of going a little overboard, and it’ll never happen, but hey.

Nerds dream too.

Gotta catch some more.

So, Pokémon Black and White came out in Japan about two weeks ago. And since the a deluge of information has come out about them. I’ve looked into it and tried to decipher what I can.

I’m going to assume that people reading this know the basics behind Pokémon. I don’t feel like explaining it right now, and want to get into the new stuff. I enjoy Pokémon. I do. It’s mix of strategy and hidden mathematics interest me greatly.

This first thing to notice is that the graphics are slightly better. Including some face sprites of certain characters in certain situations, and large detailed environments. Still nothing amazing though. The main changes are a lot more exciting. At the start, and for most of the game, you will only be able to find and catch the newly created Pokemon. None of the old four hundred and sixty odd Pokémon will be found. You’ll have to rely on the new cast. This means a refreshed experience. Having to catch Pokémon to find out their types and moves, rather than falling back on old favourites. Not that you don’t get to find them. Once you obtain the national Pokédex, you’ll be able to find and catch your old favourites, as well as transfer them from previous DS titles through a sort of minigame.

The battles are different as well. There are new triple and rotation battles, where three Pokémon fight at a time. The Pokémon move during battles, bobbing their heads, or moving their tails, no longer the static sprites. TM’s, once a one use item, are now reusable. Whether or not this makes them harder to get, I can’t tell. There are also plenty of new moves and abilities to get to grips with, and when an ability becomes active in battle, a bar appears.

I have been playing it a little, but, it being in Japanese, I have no Idea what’s going on. There’s a new evil organisation to stop, 8 new gyms, and of course, an Elite four, but I’ve not gotten to far due to language barriers. Playing it in Japanese seems to annoy me, so I’ll wait for the English release in Spring.

(Also, the fire starter becomes fire/fighting again. This annoys me.)

I shouldn't type when drunk

As I’m typing this, I am drunk. Very drunk. In fact the only reason it’s pretty grammatically correct is because I’m that anal. I’m drunker than I’ll probably ever get in Newbury, My home town. Why? Because I’ve just moved back in to Aberystwyth. (try spelling that while drunk.) Over the coming days, I shall be posting the recipes and or pictures of my favourite drinks along with photos when I go on these fun nights out. Such drinks as the death star, pan galactic gargle blaster, the denominator, brain tumour. I’ll create a little review about these and more as I get drunker. Along with the usual reviews and opinions about games.

However. My house has no internet. Any downloadable games will be missed by me until the summer period. And these posts will be uploaded whenever I go up to the University. And expect more posts about how mathematics is fucking hard.  It’s all going to be good times from here. Especially when I have to kidnap a fresher. They will be taught the ways of welsh student drinking. And enjoy it.

Until then, goodbye.

Midnight launches should be fun.

So I went to the midnight launch of Halo Reach last night.

Before I continue, I'm going to state that I don't play many FPS's, I don't own a 360 and I don't have much interest in Halo. I know that it's one of the best things to get if you have a 360, but most games on that thing involve shooting other things in some context. So why was I at this launch? To provide support for a friend. (He didn't want to be alone) and also to see what was going down.

There where two events going on in my town. One at Game, the other at Gamestation, also owned by Game. Both seemed as lively as the other. By which I mean it wasn't. People were there to just line up, get the game, and go. No interaction between them to be had.

If a bunch of people are going to gather for a common cause, at least interact with each other. Discuss the game. Get each other excited. Talk tactics. Make funny references. Exchange gamer tags for online matches.

Maybe it's just a different type of gamer. It doesn't require much to blow shit up, but there is skill in not dying while you blow shit up. But the type of gamer who plays Halo, I'm sorry to say may be the type of gamer who looks down on those who play Dragon Quest or Pokemon.

Pokemon has had loads of mid night launches. and the bigger ones that I've seen coverage of were full of people trading, battling, discussing tactics and breeding and what not. But people seemed more lively. I went to the Arceus event and battled a few people. I lost a fair few times because my team isn't perfect, but people were friendly and I learnt a few things.

Maybe it's just easier for hand held releases. Maybe it;s because I live in a smaller town which I never even knew did midnight launches. But I feel that the whole thing could have been more lively.

However I did pick up a copy of Tetris Party Deluxe while I was there. I felt better after that.