Well, this is annoying. I’ve been so preoccupied with other things that I forgot to post on my own blog! It’s been over a month now since I last wrote something here, so I figure I should change that right now.

Right… First things first, eh?

I’ll be going to both the Midland’s MCM Expo during the weekend of February 21st and 22nd and the London MCM Expo during the weekend of May 23rd and 24th, although I’ll already been in London on the 22nd to meet with some fellow cosplayers and just hang out before the weekend really starts. The Convention itself should prove to be extremely fun, what with plenty of anime, manga, videogames and whatnot. I’ll probably stock up on a few months worth of Pocky and more plushies than I can carry, knowing me. Anyway, I’ll be cosplaying as Bridget from Guilty Gear and Yuki Cross of Vampire Knight during the convention, so keep an eye out for me. I still don’t know what I’ll be wearing during the Saturday night – I might just stick with Yuki Cross’s costume. If anyone has alternative ideas, leave me comments!

What else? Hmm… Ah! For those wondering, I’m picking up Far Cry 2 sometime this week. I’m trying to ween myself off of Resistance 2, because I’m neglecting all my other PS3 games for the Co-Op Mode – which isn’t really acceptable, is it? So I’ll be busy playing Far Cry 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Folklore until the end of February. I’ll be playing COD4 simply because I hear Kizzy 2 is remarkably similar in terms of gameplay, so any warming up that I can partake in while I wait for that game is more than worth it. I’m still playing Dissidia on my PSP and Final Fantasy Tactics A2 on my DS, although I aim to pick up some new games for the two – probably Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and Killzone Liberation… I think that covers my gaming habits for the next few months, don’t you?

In terms of writings, I’m working on a Golden Sun fanfiction now as well as trying to get everything finalised for my Devil May Cry one, as well. If you’re unaware, my Devil May Cry fanfiction basically replaces DMC2 with a new story that serves to deepen our understanding of both Sparda and the battle he fought to protect the Human World. There are also plenty of new mechanics and elements I’ll be bringing in, from Dante’s fear of mortality to Angel Knight’s – the once-sacred counterpart to the Devil Knights that once sought to enslave our world. As for the Golden Sun fanfiction, I have an idea regarding what could happen: I believe a story that reverses the roles of everyone, taking place long after the events of the duology, centering around the plight of two men with great power who seek to destroy the Four Lighthouses. Why? Noone knows. But who will stop them? Well that’s up to the brand new protagonists that I’ve created from the ground up. Should be fun, no?

I think this basically covers everything I wanted to say… I’ll probably remember something later and add it, but this is it overall. I’m listening to a lot of Ayreon now, more than I used to, and even got hold of Jeff Buckley’s album “Grace”, which is surprisingly awesome. Oh, and I picked up that new Kaiser Chief’s album – also awesome. Well anyway, thanks for reading and come back soon!

2008 is nearly over, and thus it turns to the gamers to dictate which games they believe are the best of the best this year. I felt like chiming in, so here’s my Top 5 for each console. I’ve even rounded it off with an Overall Top 10 of the Year. : D

PS3

Top 5

Devil May Cry 4
Disgaea 3
Valkyria Chronicles
Resistance 2
Metal Gear Solid 4

Honourable Mention - Kung Fu Panda – this game deserves a mention simply because it’s a game no one expected to be fun. Movie games never are, after all, so we all decided subconsciously not to give this any attention. But damn, were we wrong. Sure, it’s no AAA title, but it’s more like an awesome B-Movie that you keep going back to for more.

Xbox 360

Top 5
Ninja Gaiden 2
Infinite Undiscovery
Fable 2
Fallout 3
Left4Dead

Honourable Mention - Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe – while not one of the best fighting games going, or even one of the best Mortal Kombat games going, this game does a great job at merging the two universes together with a coherent and enjoyable story. Add in a greatly balanced system, even with the hax’d Flash, and great additions to the mechanics and you’re left with a great game indeed.

Wii

Top 5

No More Heroes
Mario Kart Wii
Super Smash Bros. Brawl
De Blob
Wario Land: The Shake Dimension

Honourable Mention - Star Wars: The Force Unleashed – again, this isn’t a must-buy game by any stretch of the imagination, but this deserves an honourable mention if only because the lightsaber motions are so brilliantly tied to the Wiimote and Nunchuk that it’s worth playing this game just to pretend you’re a real Jedi.

DS

Top 5

Advance Wars: Dark Conflict
Bangai-O Spirits
Disgaea DS
Dragon Quest V
Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia

Honourable Mention - Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword – another game that stands out for something unique, this game turns your DS sideways and gives one of the most innovative ways to play an action game I’ve seen. Sure, the story is terrible and the way it is told is even worse – but the stuff in between the “cutscenes”, the gameplay itself, is beyond awesome.

PSP

Top 5

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
Super Stardust Portable
Neverland Card Battles
Ape Quest
Star Ocean: First Departure

Honourable Mention - God of War: Chains of Olympus – I give this an honourable mention simply because, while I think God of War is the worst Extreme Action genre series going, it still is an Extreme Action game and they require massive amounts of opponents and gargantuan bosses. Chains of Olympus performs as well as its PS2 big brothers, proving to us just what the PSP is capable of.

——————————————————————————————————————————-

One of the worst things on the planet is when a series decides to retcon that which came before it… Click to find out more, but beware of spoilers.

Seriously, I bloody well hate it. There’s a cartoon I like by the name of Ben 10. It started back in 2005, and is about a kid called Ben Tennyson who finds this wristband-like device known as the Omnitrix. With it, he gains access to multiple alien forms and uses it to beat up bad guys and do things that any 10 year old kid would do if they had that kind of power – sneaking into previews of their favourite game, hacking said favourite game… Heck, even dashing off to pick up some cheeseburgers from a Drive-Thru some ten miles away in a few minutes. Well, anyway. The show was awesome. It was funny, it had plenty of action and all three main protagonists were awesome. Ben was a mischievous 10 year old, Gwen was a snotty brainy 10 year old and Grandpa Max was a hardcore 60 year old. It was really well done.

The first season was great. It was about Ben learning how to use the Aliens he had access to, finding out who Vilgax is and also introducing a lot of who would become staple enemies in the series to follow. We also learn of magic, and Gwen’s interest in the field grows. The second season kept up the trend – we find out more secrets about important characters, new forms that Ben is able to access and we’re also introduced to Kevin (previously a one-shot antagonist) as the bad-ass super villain we will know him for a long time to come. The end of the second season, for me, is still unmatched in pure brilliance. Season 3 shows up, and with it we’re shown the future. Gwen has mastered magic and Ben has access to 10′000 Alien forms. Gwen also picks up, in this season, a method with which to begin to properly learn the magic she finds out she will have mastered in twenty years. An old enemy resurfaces, and the show once again gives us an amazing finale. The fourth and final season only went and made things even better. An enemy who we were told about in previous seasons comes back with a vengeance and takes centre stage for most of the season. We’re shown the future once again, and the show finishes with one of the greatest endings you could ever imagine for a show of this kind.

So in terms of sheer fun I think the original Ben 10 show was, I’d have given it a 9 at the very least. Who knows? Maybe I’ll write a full review of the series soon. Anyway, now onto the bad news. You see, Ben 10 has a sequel. It’s called Ben 10: Alien Force, and it promised to be bigger and better than the original series. Of course, I was pretty excited by the prospect and have waited eagerly for the show. Impatiently so, as I ended up downloading up to the current episode instead. But from the very first episode, things go south very quickly.

Kevin is no longer a bad-ass super villain. He’s a middleman for Alien tech smugglers. He doesn’t even have ANY of the powers he had in the first series, and he is no longer afflicted with the problem he had in the original series either. In fact, his entire power seems to have changed. Instead of absorbing and channeling energy, he now simply coats himself in whatever material it is he touches. How boring is that? At least before he had strengths and weaknesses. At least before he had a great personality and an almost single-minded desire to kill Ben. But no, by the end of the first episode Kevin is best buddies with Ben and Gwen. Did I mention that Ben can’t access ANY of the Aliens he had access to five years before? He has ten new ones, each of which are nothing more than amalgamations or offshoots of the Aliens he could access five years ago (Chromastone is basically a different looking Diamondhead and Humongousaur is the new Four Arms). Add in the annoying habit of calling out the Alien’s name whenever he transforms into them, as a weird sort of battlecry, and you already have two characters completely ruined. That isn’t it, by the way. Remember Ben 10? Remember that Gwen used a little book to learn magic? Remember Charmcaster and her uncle, Hex? Didn’t they use magic, too? Wait, didn’t the show also show us Gwen 20 years in the future, where she had the Charms of Bezel to bolster her magical powers? Well now we’re told that it wasn’t magic. Heck, no. Ben and Gwen are part alien, apparently. While it doesn’t affect Ben, it apparently gives Gwen her “magic”. Way to screw up the best part about Gwen, guys, seriously.

Now don’t get me wrong, Alien Force is a pretty good show. It has plenty of nostalgia, plenty of good fights and great character growth. Everything is fleshed out to much greater effect than the original series managed, and the enemies have more personality and diversity than before. But those glaring retcons really have ruined it for me – I’m mostly watching the show now to try to enjoy it, and to see how exactly the writers intend to sort this mess out.

Yup. I’m there. Or at least, the second day of my little hands-on will begin in less than eight hours.

You see the list of websites to the right of this blog post? Click on Save Points to read my rather short impressions of the games so far. I’m having an awful lot of fun here, I have to admit. My friends, mostly Nariko, are being their usual selves – hyper, bubbly and overly geeky. xD Like I’d ever want them any other way. We started heading off to Chiba at 8am this morning, and got there at about half nine. We wandered around for about ten minutes before heading off into the Makuhari Messe for some gaming fun. As you can imagine, I headed straight for Dissidia Final Fantasy first – spending about ten minutes playing it as the queue behind me grew insanely quickly. In the end, I had to stop. After all, I wasn’t the only person there, and my friends wanted to try some games out as well. I went back and played it again for about another fourty minutes overall across the day, getting to play as four of five of the characters. We spent most of the day in Microsoft’s half of the floor, playing a nice selection of their games. At about 1pm, we headed over to the food area and had some Bōkun Habanero (quite spicy, those).

After the Show ended for the day, we headed off to a restaurant nearby and I had Soba with sliced duck breast and negi all laced with mitsuba. Absolutely delicious. When we got back we started to play a few games that haven’t been localised outside of Japan yet, before sitting down and watching The Machine Girl. Darn, that film is awesome.

So… My first real attempt at a blog. I never really figured what’d possess someone to have one of these, but as time progresses I realise how useful they can be. You see, as the title proclaims, I have something of an overactive mind – so a mechanic such as a blog could probably bring order to this chaos. Or fail miserably trying. Anyway, I’ll be sure to keep you lot up to date with an awful lot of stuff going on in the world of writing, gaming, software, music, film, anime, manga… and a bit of Japanese stuff, too.

So yeah… Check back regularly, and you might find stuff of interest to contemplate. : D

Actually, I guess you’d like to know something about me, right? All I’ll say is that I’m British, 20 years of age, a novelist of sorts, an avid gamer and I like waffles. : D