ben is on the inter.net

Went and saw Persepolis tonight. It’s great to see an animated film not aimed at children or Japanese people! It was a pretty good movie and I encourage all of you to go see it while it’s in theaters. I learned stuff! Like, Iran kind of sucks. Unless you’re a little kid, when you can still be cool. Other than that Iran pretty much sucks and is kind of boring (these opinions are entirely those of the people responsible for this film, who may or may not have actually grown up in Iran).

The translation is pretty close to literal on this one.

(literal translation “this kind of dream I saw.”)

Watch as much as you can. At about 2 minutes in I started downloading the latest XNA stuff. I mean, I’d seen the teaser trailer before. But now it looks like an actual video game.

Well, the literal translation was more like “goodbye, perhaps I will never be able to return to heaven,” but this was more to the point.

So I’m getting hit pretty hard by The Taxman’s stronger hand, but that hasn’t stopped me from checking out some recent releases! Let’s see:

Devil May Cry 4
Rented this one for PS3 (they were out of 360 copies, but that’s cool because I liked the controls in the PS3 version better anyway). It’s probably the most approachable Devil May Cry game, but it kind of sucks that the humor of 3 has been mostly toned down (at least up to where I left off, Mission 14). Still, an extremely well-balanced high-speed combo-em-up that feels about as right as you could want. If you’re on a budget or aren’t sure that Devil May Cry is your thing, pick up the Special Edition of 3 and a copy of God Hand (you’ll have to track it down, sadly), both of which are better games than Devil May Cry 4. It’s really a pretty good game, though!

Audiosurf
Bought this on Steam for the low-low price of $8.95. It’s a weird combination of F-Zero, Amplitude, and Puyo Puyo. I like that I can feed it any music that I have sitting around, but I’ve found that the levels don’t match up as much as I would like (especially for music where beat detection is rather difficult). Still, it’s an OK game that has leaderboards for every song that you play, and I’ll probably boot it up from time to time at work while I’m waiting for a build or whatever.

Professor Layton and The Curious Village
Picked this one up for Jess and from what I’ve seen it’s a pretty good riddle game. Definitely the kind of game I want my kids to play! It’s smart and endearing and not insulting. It’s also good exercise!

Lost Odyssey
I rented this game mostly to prevent myself from being foolish and buying it, wholly expecting it to be kind of a not-good money-waste-em-up. Well, it turns out I really, really like it! It’s an extra-traditional RPG with a pretty good story and the best music the genre’s heard in years. I’m currently 7 hours in and so far, it’s made me want to keep playing. Also, the bossfights are megafuck hard, which is really welcome to be honest! You also cannot grind to become more powerful, which means that you have to employ new strategy and tactics in order to win every single bossfight! Also, the game makes you sit down and read short stories from time to time, which while uncomfortable, is a ballsy move that makes me respect the Gooch more than I thought I would given his ancient ways. Still, This and Blue Dragon have shown me that I really want Mistwalker to just destroy Square and merge with Enix already.

Burnout Paradise
I finally played one race in this game and then tore it from my 360, cursing its name, and the names of its children, and its children’s children’s children. Seriously. Way to completely miss the point, guys.

Other than that I’ve been playing Super Robot Wars W on my DS and maybe a little Mutant League Football on my Genesis or PSP maybe maybe. Maybe?

I spent almost all night translating this.

Actually. Maybe not all night…

So, for those of you that want to know how to say that stuff out loud but can’t read the syllabaries (I probably won’t do this often unless people like it or something):

1: kikenna yokan ga suru wa.
2: atashi chittomo kiken ja nai.
3: watashiwa monsutaa desu.

The goal for these will be to keep the Japanese as simple as possible, making it a series of comics to be enjoyed by children or idiots. It’s a perfect study aid! Sometimes the language will be awkward (as in, stuff that people wouldn’t say in Japanese, ever), but that’s partly because I still suck at Japanese and partly because Robot Tea Party has an elegance to it that is NOT BOUND BY GRACE. If you happen to read Japanese and notice something completely wrong, let me know and I’ll tell you whether or not that was my intention (it will help me learn, too).

So Jack and I want to start making stuff again. We’re lazily working our way through some new reviewhole:

And right now we’re working on a series of comics that should help teach elementary Japanese. I guess the intention would be to post the comics in Japanese and then eventually post them in English. For those of you that don’t know, these are a small side-story of the robot tea party comics Jack made a while back.

Reminder! This comes out February 10th in the US! I played the Japanese version and it’s a really good game! Don’t buy it at Gamestop (they’re charging $34.95 when everywhere else is charging $29.99)! It’s an adventure game! It’s a puzzle game! It’s made by Level 5! Here’s a trailer!

Between this, Super Robot Wars W (which I just got in the mail, hurray), and Shiren the Wanderer DS, I should be spending way more minutes of my life with my Nintendo Handheld than I have been recently. Exciting!

Just watched this totally great anime movie called “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time” and now I’m in a really good mood. Here are pictures of what I feel like:

It’s a Coming of Age Time Travel Love Story, and really, that combination seems to be the perfect alchemic mixture to tweak my mood up by at least 3 notches, maybe 4. One of the central themes is the importance of the preservation of art! Another one is the unspoken guilt of a time-traveler! It’s the sequel to a book called (roughly) “The Little Girl Who Conquered Time” and it’s kind of a big deal in Japan since it’s apparently quite popular and touching and it sort of came out of nowhere. Also, the author of the original book said this is “a true second-generation” of his book from the 1960s. The skies in this movie are the bluest I’ve seen in a thousand days.

Anyway, this got me thinking. We don’t have any games with time-travel where you can choose how far to go back. I mean, we sort of do, in the sense that we can load an older save, but the character we play has no idea that we’re rewinding time. I really want a game that has important decision points throughout that you can only see based on your choices in the first hour of play. Maybe an adventure game?