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Dynasty Warriors 6

July 9, 2008 by L. Bane. Leave a Comment

Being a fan of the series I snatched this one up once I found it used at a local Gamestop (even I can’t bring myself to pay the new price for a Warriors game). It had received favorable reviews, which is unusual for a Warriors game, so I figured it must really be rockin’ since I loved the other entries which were panned by critics.

However, as it is with other entertainment mediums, so it is with video games: critical love doesn’t equal a better product. Koei diligently listened to the past criticisms and redid much of what worked in the franchise. Gone are the heavily customizable weapons and characters. The special character tasks of the past which were used to obtain these customizations are gone in favor of map specific tasks of uneven quality and little in-game benefit.

Also trashed is the excellent move-set system that added some depth to the combat. Although it could be done in previous installments, the latest version actively encourages players to run around the map and press square, A LOT. When doing this, a gauge would charge up that allowed me to occasionally use the triangle button as well, but this could be more trouble than it’s worth depending on the character being used.

Another item that grates me is that it’s more difficult to level up characters. In previous installments, the first characters you use in the story mode would have nothing, making survival an ongoing issue until enough power-up items are found to make the character stronger. In turn, subsequent low level characters could use the same items, which shortens the grind level for the back half of the game. Apparently in a bid to pad the playing time, possibly because so many characters were removed from the game, Koei took that ability out.

Not that there weren’t mediocre characters worth removing from the previous games, but taken as a whole it seems like the character removal had more to do with a restrictive development schedule rather than some justified desire to tighten the ranks in order to improve the remaining characters. Another character related knock against the game is that many of the voice actors were dumped and cheaper actors found. The game is devoid of some ham-fisted favorites of the past (“On the chopping block!”, or a character who wears bells who says something like “when you here the bells, you better answer the call!”). This light level of humor provided some padding to what are rather repetitive stories.

Okay, so they took a lot out, they must have put something in, right? Well, the game does look gorgeous. Gone are the pre-rendered videos and everything is handled in-engine, making the game a bit less disjointed. Maps are huge and lushly rendered (which in and of itself is a bit of a detraction since overly large maps don’t seem to be as tightly focused). Players can now climb towers and what not, but since they took the bow out of the game there’s really no reason to do so. In what is probably the strongest gameplay improvement, the method for taking ‘capture points’ finally makes sense and is an interesting challenge to boot.

And then there’s…well…nothing else, there just isn’t all that much in this installment. Part of my disappointment was my expectation that the with all the computing power in the newer consoles, that the developer would be free to take the series in slightly different, open ended direction. Instead of something different though, this game seems to be a throwback to Dynasty Warriors ‘3.5’*. Another layer of frustration set in when I had occasional glitches with the sound in the game and a few lock-ups while saving. Needless to say, if you’re a fan of the series I’d suggest holding out for 7.

*I think it needs to be said that while this game is compartively weak, it proves the point that even bad next-gen titles are still pretty darn good.

Filed Under: gaming

Section 8

June 18, 2008 by L. Bane. Leave a Comment

Ever the source for political incorrectness, Steve Sailer has a new article up discussing the dynamics of section 8 housing.

But Rosin shows at great length that it’s not “paranoia” at all—poor people really do destroy suburbs. The tearing-down of Memphis’s inner city projects, while making Memphis’s historic downtown more fashionable for young white professionals, has launched a crime wave in the inner suburbs.

This piece actually solves two issues that I’ve been too lazy to rectify in my mind:

    • First, what has made so many inner city areas suddenly habital again? There’s even slick condos on Clevelands near west side, an area given up for gone no more than fifteen years ago.
  • Second, why have so many formally decent suburban areas gone to pot? Forest Park in Cincinnati and Maple Heights in Cleveland both spring to mind. I’m sure some demographic issues don’t help, but still.

It turns out that the two are directly related through, get this, government mismanagement*.

First, inner city government housing which should have never have been built in the first place is torn down under assumption that the hellish conditions of the projects are caused by concentrated poverty rather than the hellish inhabitants. Second, section 8 housing is handed out to those same occupants so that instead of having to work hard to live in a nice area, said occupant can just mooch on the efforts of others. All this is done with the thought that when the moochie beholds his neighbor struggling to actually pay for his house while paying taxes so that the mooochie can live next to him; that Mr. Mooch will realize the errors of his ways and start working smart and hard for his place in society which he gets for free anyway. Or something like that…

“… the match was near-perfect. On the merged map, dense violent-crime areas are shaded dark blue, and Section 8 addresses are represented by little red dots. All of the dark-blue areas are covered in little red dots, like bursts
of gunfire.
The rest of the city has almost no dots. … they were amazed—and deflated—to see how perfectly the two data sets fit together.”

*Mr. Sailer trys to make the point that section 8 is part of long term, well thought out government strategy to aid developers. I only wish our politicians were smart enough to be that corrupt.

Filed Under: law and order, politically incorrect

Japan Land #3 – Hiroshima #1

September 14, 2004 by L. Bane. Leave a Comment

Okee-Dookee. Our first destination that would probably be of interest to outside interests was Hiroshima. I had a desire to visit there when I found out it wasn’t too terribly far from Tokushima. When I tried to suggest it, I learned that it was already a planned destination. In hindsight, though, I don’t know if it was scheduled primarily for a historical visit, or for food and fun. I’ll start with the heavy issues, but whenever I hear the name Hiroshima from now on, I’ll think of the lighter things it has to offer. It isn’t fair that a city that has so much to offer gets pigeon holed as ‘that nuked city’.

The Hiroshima A-bomb Dome

Although Mr. Kendall was well familiar with the Hiroshima Dome, I hadn’t heard of it until I did some web searching prior to our visit. It’s rather heavy (spiritually), with the rubble still in the same place on the ground from where the bomb had blown it free. Understandably, it’s seen a lot of reinforcement operations to keep it standing in its familiar state. A huge (especially for Japan) tract of land is set aside where there’s a rather large park and the extremely affordable Peace Museum.

The eternal flame. The museum is at the end of the walk.

Inside the Peace Museum is where the rubber hits the road as far as the Japanese perspective on this historical event. The museum had a cool audio device that would give the English (or a dozen other languages) language translations of the presentations. Needless to say, listening to America bashing and left wing gobbledygook got old real quick, and the thing hung dead around my neck through most of the museum walk through.

Although there weren’t any blatant lies, there seemed to be several sins of omission. Primarily, it seemed as if the U.S. decision to use the bomb was made in a vacuum. Much was made of the secret Hyde Park agreement between Churchill and Roosevelt, but it failed to point out various reasons for such a decision then, and its later irrelevance when Roosevelt was dead at the time when the decision to drop the bomb was made. I may not have been paying attention, but not one battle was mentioned in the lead up to the bombing, and much was made of Japan’s (apparent) weakness at the time.

My buddy mentioned that much arm twisting had gotten the Japanese to acknowledge the Korean and Chinese forced laborers who died in the bombing. Of course, either by poor translation or intentional sloppiness, one would get the impression that the evil Americans had killed these innocent slaves who happened to find themselves working in Japan.

There was also the B.S. quip towards the end about how wars never solve anything, etc.

The only problem with all this is, I can’t heavily fault the Japanese for the tone of the museum. The war certainly didn’t solve anything for the people who were burned to charcoal on the streets of Hiroshima. Sure the Japanese could admit that they were more nasty than they let on, but in their mind, it’s irrelevant to the issue at hand. I’m sure the question they’d pose is “How much less nasty could we have been to avoid such a fate?” This, of course, gets into the various reasons for the war to begin with.

Before

After
As well, I got an uneasy feeling at the museum. The mantra told to me in school was that more people died in the firebombing campaigns of WW2, but as my buddy pointed out this was one bomb, and a nasty one at that. Also taught to me in school, were the various good things brought about the bombing, especially the saved American and Japanese lives. However, such facts could be used as a justification for any horrible weapon. The American military could have just as easily dropped chemical weapons on population centers in an effort to bring about peace. “But Sandmich” you say “the Japanese had chemical weapons too, and then it would have been okay for them to use it on us”. Well then, was the Japanese lack of nuclear capability the only thing that made using the bomb ‘correct’?

It was also, at least in my mind, a dangerous gamble. Mr. Kendall pointed out to me that the heads of the Japanese military didn’t want to surrender even then, and only the intersession of the emperor brought about peace. What if Japan didn’t surrender? What if they decided to use some nasty weapons of their own? Would people anywhere tolerate more nuclear bombing runs?

If I was Truman, I don’t know if I would’ve made the same call. In hindsight though, it would appear the correct decision was made; war is unavoidably nasty. No doubt if the U.S. didn’t use the Bomb, and pictures continued to come back of American dead stacked up on Japanese beaches, Americans would be furious that we didn’t use our super weapon to put an end to the horror. As well, though the museum preaches the peace mantra now, it would’ve been more helpful if they did that before Pearl Harbor, it’s all to easy to puke that stuff up now.

A turtle with a huge drum on his back, inside the museum

Another view

Memorial

Filed Under: Uncategorized

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