Valkyria Chronicles Review - Sorta

I had intended to write a full blown review of Valkyria Chronicles until I realized something. I liked this game way too much to just review it but it would probably be a 10,000 word article as I waxed poetic about all of the things I loved about this game and why YOU should love it too. That wouldn't really be fair or conducive to a real review. So instead I'm just going to tell you why I loved this game so much and why I hope it eventually gets the recognition it deserves.

I should start off by saying that Valkyria Chronicles is a Strategy RPG, but unlike any SRPG you've ever played before. All of the unit deployment and management is done on the combat map, overhead in 2D which is standard enough. However, all of your troop movement and combat is in 3rd person, and you have free movement of your troops over the field. This is a drastic departure from the grid based movement/combat of pretty much every other SRPG I've played and it is implemented perfectly. Trust me, it just works. That's about all the technical detail I want to get into, so on to the stuff I deem to be Good.

So just what makes this game so special? Two things: characters and story. Once you get past the initial bit of cheese every Japanese game seems to be instilled with, the characters are extremely likable and eventually lovable. I'm always drawn to a few characters with each game I play, but I found myself caring about nearly every main character on the screen, and even felt attached to the minor ones you only see during combat. Each character has a unique personality, voice and game traits, something I'd love every RPG to have. Second, the story will keep you motivated to see more of the game. There are a TON of story sequences here, some fully rendered in the game's beautiful anime/watercolor technique and some are just stills with voiceovers. All are very well done, with great dialog, even when the game is being silly just for laughs. Hans the Porcavian had me giggling every time he appeared. There are several twists and turns throughout and the ending was very satisfying, even if it leaves little room for a sequel.

There's not much else I can say other than try this game for yourself. It's the best 40 hours of gaming I've played in a long time, and I'm already considering a second play-through so I can unlock more characters and beat my best mission scores. Valkyria Chronicles will not get the recognition it deserves being a niche JRPG and I expect it to be very difficult to find at retail next year. Buy a copy now while you can before it becomes the next Ico on eBay, you won't regret it.

Point of No Return

My youngest daughter Camryn recently turned nine months old and suddenly she's not the little baby she was just last month. It's truly astounding how quickly kids learn and grow, watching the massive leaps she's made in just one month has kind of blown my mind. In what seems like no time at all, she's discovered how to crawl, wave hello, hold her own bottle, say "Mama" and "Dada" (although she hasn't quite connected the words to the people), pull herself up and stand on her own and get into everything she's not supposed to.

It all happened so fast and I'm now realizing the days of her being a baby are drawing to a close and she's charging off towards toddlerhood. On one hand I'm a little sad that her infancy is over but I'm also excited to see her doing all these new things. My oldest daughter Coral is nine already and I've forgotten how many new things there are to be discovered when you're little.

I suppose the next time I'm feeling this way will be when Cori starts high school and Cam heads off to Kindergarten. By then I'll officially be old and crotchety and probably won't blog about it with the whippersnappers.

No Bailout for Joo!

This image nicely sums up my feelings about the impending auto industry bailout:


I really don't see why failing, corrupt, poorly managed corporations deserve ANY money from the government. If the American auto industry isn't competitive anymore then they either need to restructure, retool, or fail. It happens to small business every day, no one is bailing out these owners or even larger companies that are just unable to cope with these tough economic times.

I foresee bad things in the future if this bailout goes through. We're fast approaching a state-sponsored economy and losing the free-market model we've had for so long. If this keeps up the government will have a managing stake in our banks, mortgages and automobiles. Of course maybe this will set a precedent and we can all apply for personal bailouts the next time we screw our finances up. Only time will tell.

The Truth about the GOP

Yes, that's right, they're DAMN DIRTY SKRULLS!



Now if only I could find a photo with the true face of a Mr. George Dubbya Bush, we could expose them for the shapeshifting aliens they really are. This explains so many things, such as why McCain's arms are so short (botched genetic code during shifting), why Palin's hair is always so impeccable and why G.W.B. is hellbent on world domination.

These hilarious images were created by Serena over at the Aspen Comics message boards. Thanks for the laugh Serena!

*I am responsible for the content of this message and imply no political bias on the behalf of Serena or Aspen Comics. Thank you for your support*

Fresh Wheels

This Saturday my wife and I had planned on having a nice dinner, doing some minor shopping and maybe checking out the Toyota dealership to see what prices on FJ Cruisers were looking like. By some strange twist of fate we ended up trading in our Chevy HHR and driving home in a brand new Mazda CX-9. I know, it makes complete sense doesn't it?

The details of this transaction are too varoius and sundry to list here, but the skinny of it is we got into this newer, much larger vehicle for roughly the same payment we've had on the HHR for three years now. Although this is not what I expected to be driving right now, I'm very happy with our purchase and I think it'll be a great car for our family. The CX-9 is huge, seats up to seven people, has AWD and drives great for such a large vehicle (it's bigger than our Ford Explorer).

Here are few pics of the new ride. And for the record, my wife said we could get a sports car for our next vehicle. I'm holding her to it!

Fringe: Getting better but...

Last time we were together I posted my issues with J.J. Abrams new show, Fringe. However, I did state I'd give the show another chance to win me over and the last two episodes have been a marked improvement. This weeks episode has finally added some truly mysterious and ominous details to the Pattern with the introduction of the new character The Observer and his ties to the Bishop family. I'm hoping this is part of the overall mythology of the show and will continue to creep up in future episodes.

This being said, I dig the addition of the new character, but he's just a tad too much like the Marvel Comics character The Watcher. Let's run down the similarities. Alien character tasked with watching the lives of Earthlings? Check. Possessing a code of non-interference but still can't help meddling? Check. Creepy bald dude with no eyebrows? Check.

Ok, I know the idea of a supernatural or alien being observing Earth is nothing new in science fiction. Marvel's Watcher is a throwback to 1950's sci-fi. Fringe is obviously very conscious of it's old school roots as well. I hope that Abrams can be a bit more subtle with his mixing and matching of all things sci-fi as we build the mythology of this show. But if we see a new character named Herald of Galaxius I'm going to lose it.

Frayed Fringes

Last night I choked down the second episode of Fringe. I had planned on writing about the premier episode last week but it didn't leave me with the warm and fuzzies, so I decided to hold off until after this week's show to form my opinion. Unfortunately, warm and fuzzies are still MIA.

Before the season started, Fringe was touted as the next big thing from uber-geek J.J. Abrams. It was going to be the X-Files only better, with an emphasis on "fringe science". They also warned that the show would "jump the shark" frequently. This should have triggered my spider-sense, but I kept my hopes high.

So, on to the show. I'll summarize my issues with Episode #1: Joshua Jackson is a complete casting bust. I assume the main function of his character (Peter Bishop) is to provide comic relief and act as a bridge between his mad scientist father and the rest of the world. He only succeeds in making lame jokes in situations where even Mulder would cringe and generally being annoying. Agent Olivia Dunham barely seems competent to be a run-of-the-mill FBI agent let alone tackling these strange "Pattern" cases. Also, the music sucks. It sounds like they took the music from Lost and just shortened it by about ten seconds.

Ok, I feel better now. On to Episode #2. Again, last night's episode started off well just like the previous week's entry. Crazy super aging baby busting out of the stripper was awesome. Dr. Bishop is a trip and right now the only reason I'm still watching this show. We also have an unsolved case from Agent Dunham's past that looks promising. The suspense was starting to build as we see the killer take new victims while Dr. Bishop works on more crazy theories. But toward the end, things start to fall apart, badly. We jump the Great White Shark by taking pictures of a dead girl's retinas. The idea that the last thing you see is burned into your eyes is something I've heard of before but they take it to new ridiculous heights. Our intrepid team is going to get these images with with a borrowed electrical impulse camera from Massive Dynamics. No explanation of what the camera is supposed to be used for or why MD just loans it out like a library book, but we accept it'll take great afterimages from expired eyeballs. Then we get our revelation, an image from the dead strippers retina turns out to be a picture of a bridge! Wait, if this supposed to be what she last saw before dying wouldn't it be the face of the guy that killed her? Or the ceiling? No, it's the bridge that she looked at three hours earlier and couldn't even see from where she died. Ooookay.

It gets better. Later in the show, the last surviving victim goes into cardiac arrest after the bad guy's dad messes with her IV. She must be saved and Peter is just the man to do it. How will he restart her heart without a defibrillator? By wrapping some bare electrical wire around two giant washers and hitting the power, that's how! Of course, instead of burning two holes straight into her chest the makeshift device reboots her perfectly. These last twenty minutes were like watching and episode of Scooby Doo. If it wasn't for you darn kids, I'd have gotten away with it!

Now, I don't have a problem with a show coming up with crazy ideas as long as they're presented with a basis in reality and are taken seriously by the show itself. Unfortunately this is one area where Fringe fails. I was a huge X-Files fan and accepted some pretty crazy stuff from that show but they always made it seem like this stuff could really happen. When Fringe jumps the shark it's almost comical, the show is laughing about it as much as I was.. It's campy in its presentation and this has completely turned me off. I'll give this show a few more episodes to see if they can attempt to ground this thing in some semblance of reality. Otherwise, I'll be passing on Fringe and forgetting about the Pattern all of Massive Dynamics mysterious goodies.

Beware the Lungfish!

For the five and a half people that actually read my blog, I'd like to recommend a new site for your perusal. My friend Greg has launched Lungfishopolis, a blog about two boys and their love for video games. Greg and Brandon are handling the writing chores and I have to say they've come out of the gates quite well. This isn't the standard preview/review site, but rather an amusing commentary from all corners of the video game universe. Knowing Greg, I'd expect to see quite a bit of emphasis on the virtues of retro gaming and an occasional rant about lacking the time to actually play everything he'd like to. Brandon has an excellent dry sense of humor and actually gets flown to Vegas to play video games. Some people have all the luck!

So head on over to Lungfishopolis, enjoy the scenery, take off your shoes and stay a while. Brain of F gives the site four Rabid Midgets out of six, nearly a perfect score on this scale!