Bulletstorm

I wasn't particularly interested in this game when it first reared it's head at last year's E3, but after realizing it came from the same guys who made Painkiller, my interest was sparked.

You play as Greyson Hunt, a space pirate that wears combat armor made from recycled Fords and old biker jackets and carries enough firepower to reduce the entire city of Detroit to smoldering rubble... more so than it already is I mean.

I do find myself wondering why he says he's a "Space Pirate", though. Do pirates on earth say they are "Sea Pirates"? Does he pirate space itself, and if so, who is he pirating it from? Maybe those people who have shelled out thousands of dollars for a square km of the moon...

Anyhow, the game's primary feature is the ability to "Kill with skill", which means that you are constantly reducing the enemies in the game to mangles giblets using the aforementioned excessive fire power and your time displacing gravity tether. Using the tools at your disposal and your trusty boot, you and your ragtag team of mercs traverse the ruined world of Stigia, which if I recall correctly is an abandon vacation planet inhabited solely by psychotic cannibals. The only way I can think to describe the gameplay is by saying that you are essentially the roided up relative of Neo from the first Matrix movie, only lacking the ability to shut the fuck up while killing people. Honestly, the one thing that bugs me about this game is the absolutely childish one liners that are spouted by Greyson. It makes Duke Nukem's one liners seem like nitrous oxide infused gold. As far as voices and dialogue go, I would rather have had someone of Baird's caliber from Gears of War and his cynical sense of humor than Steve Blum going on about poop chutes and dicks, but I suppose you can't win them all.

At this point I'm pretty sure the demo is available for download from XBL for both gold and free members, but if not I know for a fact that anyone on PSN can grab it. The demo shows a mode called Echoes, which allows you to play thorugh a timed section of the game while attempting to rack up as many skill points as possible. I strongly suggest you check it out and see the carnage for yourself. Oh, and if you preorder now you get into the Gears of War 3 beta, if you're into that sort of thing.

There are also leaderboards for the demo and I'm currently ranked at 284 out of over 80,000 with 18165 points. See if you can beat my score ;).

And we're back...

Well, I'm back. You may have noticed things have changed around here. It has come to my attention that the best way to get the wrong kind of attention from the wrong kind of people, i.e people with more money and better lawyers that you, is to have an anime blog that supplies links to projects they allegedly have purchased the rights to. So from now on this blog will be used to host the amusing thoughts and ramblings that usually manifest themselves around the time I'm trying to get some fucking sleep. First up, the plight that is recent anime.

You know, the more I watch anime and frequent sites like Sankaku Complex the more I grow to hate the Japanese and everything in their current culture. Every single thing they churn out is a fucking cliche; the fact that keywords on sites like anidb lead to thousands of different shows is evidence of that. Every show inevitably has a sudden girlfriend or harem, and every male lead will act like a socially inept tosser who shoots blood from his nose if a girl so much as rubs up against him, which of course will get him beaten nearly to death by the twinkly eyed cock wallet of the moment. Remember kids, violence against women is wrong, but they can beat you and stab you and sell your possessions to spite you because that is what equality is all about. The Orwellian future is now, only it's feminists and equality that are imposing their control on us, not government (Will save the rest of that rant for the next time I let my inner misogynist out).

Some may say I take these things too seriously, and that it's just anime. But what of the select few shows where people react to these events in the way you'd expect someone with a functioning brain to react, you ask? Or shows like Mushishi or Saraiya Goyou in which the events just don't take place? Well of course the shut-ins that compose 50% (Made up figure) of Japan's population refuse to watch it and it gets canceled or receives one short season and then fades into obscurity because there weren't 15 excessively naive virgin girls fighting over some skinny androgynous teen who develops a fatal bleeding condition the second he looks at a girl. Of course if it isn't hotties and idiots, it's robots and children, or teenagers and superpowers, or one of the other redundant things the Japanese can't seem to free their creativity from. Though at the same time western entertainment is no better, it just has a different heap of samey bullshit it grinds up and pours into a new mold every time the drug bucket starts to get low.

Another thing I just can't wrap my mind around is how idols and celebrities are treated in Japan. People getting fired from news anchor positions because they were holding a box of condoms while fully clothed in a photograph that was somehow uploaded to the web, or voice actresses and idols receiving death threats because they "betrayed" their fanbase by having sex with their partner of 3 years. It's enough to make one facepalm hard enough to break bones.

The only thing in current Japanese culture that doesn't seem tainted at this point is porn. Because let's face it, the story takes a distant back seat to it's essential purpose: getting your rocks off.

Perhaps I'm just inherently jaded, but I feel it best to abandon this sinking ship that is mainstream anime before the rats start clawing at your ankles in an attempt to escape the rising water that is generic moe and bullshit.

Stay tuned for my next rant when I tear into whatever it is that is currently eating at me like a starved anteater, or perhaps I'll just make a calm observation about something interesting in life.