Profil de madsci565

Great Choice for GG fans

GGXXAC is one of the many manifestations of the glorious Guilty Gear series. Featuring unique graphics, excellent music, exquisitely balanced gameplay, and a delightfully quirky cast of characters, the series has long been considered a 2D fighting game quite unique in its own right. Guilty Gear has been released in a plentitude of versions to expand and test various options of play, and GGXXAC for the Wii is the most recent one to come to our shores (at time of writing). This version's most striking features are the multiple inputs that can be used--the Wii Remote and Nunchuk configuration, the Nintendo Wii Classic Controller, or the Nintendo Gamecube controller, allowing the player to choose whichever method is most comfortable. For players of other 2D fighters, GGXXAC may become a favorite, and at the least will be a fresh new experience; for players of previous Guilty Gear games, this game is more of what you know and love. The game's primary downside are that some features in the game are not mentioned or poorly-explained in the instruction guide, sometimes making high-level gameplay potentially frustrating. The game also displays a wide range of difficulty, which can be considered either a feature or a frustration. The game is definitely capable of posing a challenge to almost any players.

Bleach Wii: Fast-paced and Fan-serving

Bleach: Shattered Blade was a game I largely bought because I am myself something of a fan of the Bleach anime/manga series. I do also like fighting games, but it's no secret that other games handle the genre better--so I wasn't buying it expressly for that fact. That being said, I didn't know what to expect from B:SB, so it was a new experience when I loaded it in my Wii and fired it up. The combat in Bleach: Shattered Blade is a strange mix of flurries of activity punctuated by moments of squaring off; regular blows have a strong tendency to be deflected if the enemy instigates any kind of attack while being attacked, lending to a strange sort of hybridized offensive defense. Critical Attacks, which are slower, are mostly unstoppable (including by blocking) and instead require dodges; a player with quick reflexes may be able to avoid them even at close range, but many characters have a deceptively large area in which they can strike with even simple blows. Attacks of all sorts consume a Spiritual Pressure gauge, which must be replenished over time, preventing infinite streams of spammed attacks but also inserting delays in battle. Bleach: Shattered Blade includes a character not seen in either the anime or the manga, which to me seemed a bit exciting when I first read about it, but the character turned out to be anti-climactic in terms of abilities (not to mention the comical mismatch between the appearance of his character and his voice actor's timbre). The plotlines in the game are somewhat forced as well, but not entirely worthless, at any rate; that being said, most fighting games are almost completely devoid of plot to begin with, so I suppose it isn't a major complaint. The game's graphics are a strange mixture of anime-ish cel shading and 3D, and the characters have that kung-fu-movie tendency to not match up anything they're saying with the movements of their mouths. This is especially true of victory salutes/taunts, wherein the character's mouths often don't move at all while speaking is taking place. Perhaps this is less of a concern to you, but to me it made the characters seem more sterile and robotic--but part of the reason I like the Bleach animation series is because the characters seem so lively and vivid: thus, my dissatisfaction with this element. One good thing about B:SB is that it makes most characters quite serviceable when fighting against one another; playing a Captain from the series against, say, a seated officer doesn't mean that the Captain has a major power advantage. This means that players are, for the most part, free to play as their favorite characters without having to worry about being slaughtered by virtually everyone else's superior techniques. There are still a few exceptions to this rule, but again, characters that just don't work are another staple of many fighting games. At the end of the day, Bleach: Shattered Blade is a fighter of bread-and-butter quality; though it does some things you won't find in other fighters, it isn't spectacular in the areas of commonality, either. If you're a fan of the series and don't yet own a Bleach game, you'll probably like this game a lot--mostly for the wide variety of characters available to be played. Otherwise, you could probably do better with a different fighting game series, in which your movelists will have some continuity with other games--barring a major improvement in quality, it's unlikely the Bleach fighting series will go too much further.

A classic, but not for everyone

This movie combines a unique storytelling style with a forward and flamboyant message, wrapping up a smorgasbord of ideologies in a driven package. However, overly-conservative viewers should be advised: this movie is progressive in its thinking, and may easily offend those of certain perspectives. For those willing to think outside the box, the movie will provide a thought-provoking ride mixed with excellent dramatic work and a fair helping of action; for those with extremely set views in opposition to its cause, it will likely prove an unpleasant, distasteful ride. One of the neatest things about this movie is that the main character, V (played by Hugo Weaving), remains in a mask essentially throughout, necessitating unique performance to portray emotion from behind the eternally-smiling Guy Fawkes visage--performance which Weaving handles beautifully. Evey Hammond, played by Natalie Portman, is also a character who becomes transformed through the course of the movie, and in so doing serves as something of a distilled icon of the movie's message itself. It's a beautiful transition, despite the somewhat jarring visual image of Portman shaved bald. It remains, even after many watchings, one of my favorite movies ever.