Welcome To This Crazy Time!

~Adieu, 2007~

As 2007 draws to a close, we look back on it and reflect on its significance. Truly, 2007 was a year among many others- it went on for 12 months of varying length and ended up at an even 365 days. At least 214 of those were 24 hours in length, most likely more, though I seem to recall a distressing couple of 26-31-hour days. But chronological weight isn’t the only thing 2007 had going for it. As the year before an Olympiad, a leap year, and a Presidential election, we can also take into account all of the things that 2007 is not. No righteous underdog overcame adversity to bring the gold home to their impoverished but tight-knit hometown, for example. February didn’t expand in a cocky manner. Bush is still our President, god bless his presumably fucking immaculate undergarments.

As I’ve been doing for several recent years then, I see no reason why not to write an overlong, meandering, pointless little retrospective in honor of the soon-to-be-late 2007 as well. So treat yourself to a frosty beverage, 2007, you earned this! And not just because your father was 2006, another fine year packed with mid-term elections and PS2 murders.

Pic unrelated but awesome.
2007- THIRD HALF’S NINTH YEAR ON THE INTERNETS, FIRST YEAR AT HOGWARTS

2007’s most significant development on this site’s front is the sad resignation of being one of the last of my web ‘circles’ to forgo old-fashioned long-form articles in favor of automated blogging software and more-frequent mini-updates of varying relevance. For the most part I’m pretty satisfied with the WordPress installation, for all its shortcomings. granted I never got around to converting all the old articles to the ‘dynamic’ format. It kind of blows for making a webcomic interface, though. I also set out to create a spiritual sequel to my favorite NES game, but tripped up in the execution stage of things. Though completing the demo is looking iffy, I’m hopeful for producing something next year with some help.

It’s been rather tempting to change the site’s name/identity since reopening on my own space, especially as nearly every one of my peers (people I link to and like to pretend like me) has changed web identities, and finding out last year about another “Third Half” site that stole the .com domain, also hosts a webcomic of dubious quality, and seems to be owned by a Vis Commie. My pal Tome continues to spring up new blogs while archiving his and Zartan’s wondrous shops, Ecchi-Attack rose from the ashes (with banner art by yours truly) Even the time-honored Toastyfrog has been retitled Gamespite after the tragically short webcomic, but in the end, force of habit prevailed, and eventually thirdhalf.net was mine.

4chan AND THE ATTACK OF THE MEMES

Maybe it was like this last year and I just didn’t notice it, but it seems like internet memeage has become general knowledge to far too much of the general populous. I made reference to a conversation at work where an older coworker told me what day “Talk Like A Pirate Day” was. LOLcats are appearing in print magazine ads (or MAGAZEENS.) In light of this, I propose one of two things:

1. Either everybody on the internet speak the King’s Fucking English
2. Add another layer of retard encryption; perhaps typing random ejaculations from recent movies in 1337, backwards. 11!!147R4P$

Whoever wins, we lose.TALK ABOUT COMICS, WHY DON’T YOU

My comic project, Revolver Knight, continues to trek on, finishing off its first ‘Disk’ on the twist that Kenji’s sidekick was in fact a spy for The Bad Guy all along, however unwittingly. I’m surprised I’ve really stuck with it this long, to be honest, every other attempt I’ve made at the story over the years usually flounders and gets rewritten a chapter or two in. I wish I had some of the old drafts handy to show off how far it’s come. Then again, I don’t. They’re worse crap than what I churn out now. “But wait, you’re calling your own pet project crap?” you say? Yeah, pretty much. While it is my own brainchild and all, and a series I’ve invested nearly a decade of work into, I’m more than capable of admitting it’s still not quite where I want it to be in execution. Disk 2’s was going to be more story intensive to begin with, but with feedback from readers and friends, I’m making an effort to keep things tight and faster paced than before.

Which brings me, in a roundabout way to a certain blog I ran across earlier in the year that’s since gone on hiatus. Seeing as how he was averse to being linked in the past, I’ll avoid it here (though the link can be found elsewhere [scroll down dammit.]) Your Webcomic is Bad and You Should Feel Bad is very similar to something I myself wanted to do for a long time but avoided mostly due to the whole glass-houses thing that would come into any and all arguments I might spark up voicing my critiques on the likes of offal like Transe(sic)-Generation or FOGClub. I suppose if I ever indulged in it in the future, I can look back and point to the above as evidence that I can admit when I’m wrong, and that my own work has room to improve.

That said, let me present a handful of E-WARDZ(tm) for achievements in the world of webcomics.

Or, no, nevermind. Just avoid Shredded Moose like the plague (or at least its authors.)

“I may not know art, but I know a steaming pile when I see it!”

THE GAMING FRONT

This’s been a good year for games as far as I’m concerned. I’m pretty much up-to-date as far as portable systems (I finally caved and got a PSP a month or two back for the Disgaea re-release) and quite a few games I wasn’t expecting to be good surprised me. Let’s have a look at my favorites and least favorites, shall we?

BEST STRATEGY RPG
Soul Nomad, as a non-Disgaea Nippon Ichi title seemed like it was doomed to being a slightly more adventurous but fatally flawed strategy RPG at first. To the contrary, SN proved itself to be a light, tasty treat. In fact, I might dare say I like it better in some ways to N1’s favored child- the pacing is much better and doesn’t necessitate mandatory lengthy replays of prior levels or grinding in Room Inspections (the Item World du jour) for this title. Though the obscene levels are still there if you want to achieve them, I plowed through most of the storyline without the screeching halts that plague their other ones. Actual squad design and placement of units takes precedence over sheer brute force, and leveling up Rooms (your battle formations) is more productive to your overall process than levels alone- leveling the rooms allows you more slots to place characters within. The placement of units determines their behavior in battle; place a healer in the front row and they’ll wave their staff for a pathetic amount of damage, put them in the middle rank and they’ll heal one character a lot, put them all the way in the back and they’ll cast a healing spell over the whole formation. Add to this a unique twist on the ‘silent hero’ character allowing them to have a mute cipher possessed by a colorful ‘lead.’ The biggest disappointment in Soul Nomad, really, is the genericness of the story cast. Most of them are only slight alterations of the stock version of their ‘class,’ for example one of the main females is simply an archer with an oversized custom hairpin, and another is a recolored Brawler with a band-aid applied to his cheek. I guess the fact I can’t recall their names right away says something there too.

WORST HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE CASH-IN
Transformers: The Movie enjoyed success in the theaters in spite of being a warmed-over Independence Day, and the action figures are having a tough time staying on shelves. The game adaption, at least the most-pimped edition (for consoles), leaves a lot to be desired. As you may have read in my earlier review of the DS game, it’s essentially a portable GTA-alike game with simple, but enjoyable mechanics. The PS2 version, on the other hand, was rightfully overlooked by many. I doubt even I could categorize all of the flaws in this game, and I’m the one who discovered the CAVE OF ANNOYANCE. If the game would let you actually ENJOY the sandbox portions without a mission prompt coming over your radio every five minutes or so- bonus points in the desert level where it’s the unintelligible Frenzy prompting you to do things you can’t understand anyway- it might actually be quite a bit more fun. Instead, you get shoehorned into a nonstop series of TIMED seek-and-destroy missions. Transformers: The Game just loves to let you get all the way to the end of a ‘thrilling’ chase/battle stage only to be forced to start over from the beginning because your timer ran out while trying to follow a meaningless HUD beacon and a minimap in the corner of the screen- while dodging police barricades and phone poles and other things that shouldn’t REALLY stop a killer robot semi truck.

Which brings me to the really painful part of this game- the physics are pretty much completely fucked. There are instances where the shockwave from a massive explosion will pull you further into the blast if you’re facing away from the source. In the Blackout vs. Ironhide boss battle, this is a nearly game-breaking glitch as Ironhide’s rapid-fire missile attack will often make him get ‘stuck’ firing endlessly while you’re being tossed around like a ragdoll. The game’s collision physics seem to adhere to a strict ‘all or nothing’ rule, too, where the slightest brush against a lightpost sends objects into a flying tumble- though the speed you crash into things does affect the speed of the object’s flight. For example, if you hit a phone pole at 20 miles an hour, the pole will go flying end over end as if struck at 60 miles an hour- just much, much slower.

Just like in real life.

There’s plenty of other things to go on about within the game- the odd absence of much of the product placement from the film (HMMM), the lack of continuity with the movie (actually a good thing), the horrible timed missions, the fact you can’t jump while carrying anything, boss battles consisting entirely of ‘throw something at them to disrupt their INVINCIBLENESS then wail on them’, an inability to choose your character in roaming mode, the timed missions, the Rare-esque ‘collect a billion doodads’ attempt at extending the gaming experience, useless and frankly plain misleading ‘bonus content,’ and, oh yeah, the entire experience is less satisfying than the PORTABLE edition.

It’s no wonder I’ve been favoring my NDS over my other systems, really. Other than being able to play my games in short bursts during lulls at the lab, waiting rooms, car rides, so on so on, it just seems to get most of the stuff I want, from the retrogasmic Contra 4 (WAY TO GO, WAYFORWARD, I KNEW YOU HAD IT IN YOU) to the mostly-textual Phoenix Wright series, and even the rather unexpected surge of good old dungeon crawlers (Izuna, Etrian Odyssey).

It’s a shame nobody really gives a crap about Mega Man these days- ZX Advent is the first game in the series to deliver an actual plot twist. Most all of the rough spots in the first game have been smoothed over, the godawful map of the first the most noteworthy. They also included a number of sub-menus keeping track of your Biometal secret moves, fetch quests in progress, and an alternate touchscreen transformation method if you don’t like cycling through all of the icons. Unfortunately the biggest “huh” of the first hasn’t really been solved- the two main characters are more distinct than Vent and Aile ever were, but their storylines don’t intertwine yet, and the presence of one-or-the-other hero at the midway point only serves to create the idea there’s two separate stories going on. Perhaps in a third installment everything will make sense… At any rate, I appreciate ZXA not busting my balls for Sub-Tank #4 like ZX did. Running from the instant-kill lava while blasting walls away, my ass.

IN MEMORIAM

• Evel Kneivel
• ANIKIIIIII
  
• Anna Nicole Smith
• Pakistan
  
• Isabella Blow (survived by Joe)
• Ingmar Bergman
• Leona Helmsley
• That I HAS A BUCKET Walrus
• Pakistan
• Robert Jordan
• Christopher Paolini (working on this one, actually)
• Snape (OH SNAP[E])
• Dengeki Shoujo Eishi-Tan

Hidoi yo, onii-chan!

And on a more serious note, my paternal-side grandfather passed this year, not long after I got to visit him. As irreverant as it may be to throw an honest rememberance after a maybe forty percent humorous bullet list, I do want to take a moment and remember him fondly and hope he’s at peace, bulldozing clouds.

On that nice, reflective note, I think that seems like a good place to end this. With a potentially promising (but more likely than not horrifying and dismal) year ahead of us, I urge everyone to be good to each other, and if you can’t be conscientious, just be conscious of others. It’s easier to spell, and while your ears are open, you might pick up some ideas to better yourself. It’s actually a little something I picked up from Phoenix Wright- If you’re exasperated with thoughts of say, “Why does everyone act like I’m such a jerk?” try to identify something jerky about yourself and try to fix it. And if that doesn’t work, stuff them in a trunk and kick it in the river.

SEASON’S GREETINGS AND STUFF