Mysterious Adventures in Fandom.

It has been a while internet, and it is good to be back. I have been thinking about anime, japan, and the fandom scene as a whole recently. It seems that there are a few types of fans out there that I have observed. The first type is the typical anime fan, the kind that, after one look, you cant tell there is at least a 50% chance they like anime. The kind of people that flaunt their hobby because it is fairly unique. This category also includes the Japanophiles and weaboos, who would gladly trade their white skin for yellow.

Next is the closet fan. We have all seen them, the people who look totally out of place at a con, or the people that see you reading manga and whisper to you that it is a good one once they have made sure no one is looking. Because us fans are weird right? They look like everyone else but feel the need to hide their interests in order to fit in.

Third, the group that I fit into. I like Anime, very few of my friends do, because I don't feel my friends need all the same hobbies as me. At the same time i do not hide that i like japan, and everything about it. I don't dedicate my life to it but i treat it as one of my favorite hobbies and interests. Hoping to one day go to Japan but not set all my goals toward that.

That may seem like a pretty shallow analysis of fans, and I am sure there are hundreds of sub-groups in there, but this is what I see.

What brought me to this train of thought was my recent trips to my high schools Japan Club, or as it really is "people who mainly just like anime" club. I see all of these types of people in there. It is actually kind of cool to see some closet fans talk to some super pumped up mega fans. It turns out that a lot of us knew each other but didn't even know we all liked anime. Anyways........ that is it i guess..

Crackdown Review

Platform: Xbox 360

Once upon a time, the cops screwed up so badly that gangsters managed to take over the world. The government then concentrated all its resources in a single city to prepare for a counterattack. As a part of this, they also began to make super soldiers. The sheer ridiculousness of this plot aside, you essentially play as a superpowered assassin. Don’t think of this as Assassin’s Creed, though, because this game forces you to be about as subtle as a howitzer. Then again, Creed wasn’t very good at that either.

The whole point of Crackdown is to kill all the leaders of the three gangs: Los Muertos (Mexicans), the Volk (Eastern Europeans), and the Shia Gen (Asians). While most of your victims make sense (they provide supplies, manpower, or information), some of them are just bizarre. For instance, one of the Los Muertos leaders supes up cars. Uhh . . . okay. That’s fucking dangerous. Luckily, these guys hide in very discreet places like oil rigs, the only skyscraper with a door, and the gym, so you don’t have to look long.

Control-wise, the commands are assigned to good positions, but the effects of pressing the buttons aren’t so sensible. For instance, pressing the melee attack button will make you kick, but you can’t control said kick for shit. Instead, you’ll probably miss by a mile, look like a ballerina in doing so, and either fall off a ledge to your horrible demise or get blown to smithereens by a grenade or four. Also, as the game progresses, you are able to jump higher and higher. Unfortunately, the controls lack sensitivity to the point that your choices are either to tap the jump button to hop like a morbidly obese ten year old playing basketball or to mash that fucker down and launch into orbit. Further complicating matters is the level design. As buildings get taller and taller, they become progressively more deformed, making them ridiculously difficult to climb. You’ll often find yourself slamming into an extended ledge or being stranded on the side of a building because the architect was on crack and decided to model it after one of Picasso’s faces,

Fortunately, there are ways to play such that you can avoid platforming. It’s called walking, and it’s a great way to get shot in Crackdown. Regardless, what you can’t avoid are gang showdowns. After you spend an hour or two pretending you’re Spiderman, you’ll probably stumble upon a gang hideout. At this point, your options are to either break down the front door and kill everything in sight or sneak in through the back door and kill everything in sight. Early on, this is simple enough since all you’re up against are a bunch of pea shooters and the occasional grenade. Things escalate, however, to the point that every schmuck with two hands touts 800 round machine guns, heat seekers, or cluster grenades. Combined with the fact that whenever you get blown up, you enter ragdoll physics mode and flop about helplessly for an eternity, you’ll often find yourself flying off rooftops while on fire and unable to do a damn thing about it. Hell, if you’re really unlucky, the enemies will chain heat seekers to juggle you in the air. Also, where the fuck is your backup? There’s a damn cop car on every street and the lazy bastards can’t stop by to lend you a hand?

On a quick note, one of the major features of the game is the ability to boost your skills. As the voiceover guy says, “Skills for kills, agent. Skills for kills.” I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that none of those s’s are z’s. For instance, as you kill more people with grenades, your explosives skill goes up, which makes your explosions a tad larger. When maxed out, you can annihilate entire intersections with a single rocket, which is pretty damn cool. On a less cool note, you can become a better driver by running enemies over. Yeah . . . good luck with that.

Let me get this out of the way: Crackdown is a damn fun game to fuck around in. To that end, all you have to do is download the Keys to the City pack to have access to a slew of cheats. When your car is invincible and goes 200+ mph, there’s no way you can’t have fun, unless you’re completely dull, in which case you can go play Too Human and tell yourself everything’s all right. All that aside, this is one frustrating son of a bitch to play seriously. Climbing poorly designed apartments and serving as little more than a volleyball for a bunch of trigger-happy gangsters to spike with rockets isn’t my idea of a fun time. Look elsewhere if you’re one of those obsessive perfectionist types that only live for plot and collectibles.

Rating: 3/5

Too Human Review

Platform: Xbox 360

Too Human is the story of mankind’s struggle to maintain its identity in a world where the cruel, unforgiving, endless winter and the constant threat of death drive many to abandon their humanity in favor of cybernetic enhancements to the point where they become more machine than man. It represents the ever-present dilemma humankind faces as technology becomes progressively more involved in every facet of our existence in the guise of a simple video game, and provides a deep and thoughtful commentary on the crossroads humanity finds itself at.

If you thought I was being serious in the last paragraph, you need a .45 caliber reality check. “The Misadventures of the Cyberpunk Norse Gods in Monotonous Combat Land” would be a far more apt title. You play as the futuristic super soldier version of the Norse god Baldur whom everyone has the hots for despite the fact that he’s one fugly bastard. Seriously, the dude’s bald and has glowing blue scars all over his face. Back to the matter at hand, he’s on a quest to . . . uh, kick ass. There’s supposed to be some backstory about Baldur’s murdered wife, Loki being a total dick, and a plot to destroy the world. I wasn’t really paying attention, and you’d have to pay me to give a rat’s ass about some typical soap opera story with cyberpunk embellishments.

Playing the actual game, I quickly realized that the only thing special about this game is its control scheme. The gameplay itself is the usual run-and-gun (or cut) action that’s been passed down from generation to generation and involves hacking away at “grunts” that all seem to have more life than you. I couldn’t tell because the damn game never showed me how much life the regular baddies have. This process might have been sped up if you either didn’t always knock them down or you could hit enemies while they’re on the ground, but neither of these things happens! Sure, this also means that they can’t cheap shot you while you’re down, but making that a one-way street with you being invincible while in agony after having your stomach slashed open would have easily solved the problem.

Before I get ahead of myself, I should say that your attacks in Too Human are controlled by the analog sticks (mostly the left one) instead of the buttons. At first glance, this would seem to spare your fingers from certain repetitive motions (and perhaps spare them for other repetitive motions unrelated to the game), but in reality, losing the precise movement and camera control functions of the two analog sticks deals a severe blow to the overall combat experience. For instance, you can’t just sit in one place and whack away at the oncoming hordes because the imprecise analog stick controls will easily let the baddies surround you and ravage you with their beastly appendages. Instead the instruction manual encourages “sliding”, which is where you target enemies far away from yourself after every attack in order to dash toward them and prevent a ganking situation. This, combined with the fact that you can’t hit the often downed enemies, makes combat a monotonous nightmare.

“What about the guns?” you might ask. Well, they fare even worse. Targeting is done using the left analog stick, which works just fine against single enemies, but when you’re faced with a cluster of targets, you’re fucked as the game’s targeting system goes berserk and there’s no alternate way to change your target. Oh, and don’t bother telling me to kite them. For those of you who don’t know, kiting is the tactic where you keep running away from an enemy and using ranged attacks to cut them down without fear of retaliation. Unfortunately, Baldur is one slow son of a bitch, so just about everything can hunt you down and kick your ass if you try to run. It’s like watching one of those bear mauling videos (or am I the only one who does that?), ‘cept you’re the one getting mauled. Anyway, the only things slower than you are the trolls and your own allies, and as much as you might want to, you can’t shoot your unwanted help.

Speaking of your allies, these guys are worthless. They can’t even distract the enemy long enough for you to catch a breather. When they are around, they each get the attention of 2-3 enemies tops. This may seem like a lot, but considering that you go up against waves of 20-30 baddies at once, you’ll be doing almost all of the work. To top it off, they have difficulty following you from platform to platform, so you’re usually on your own anyway.

While Too Human definitely won’t be getting any real praise out of me, it isn’t an unredeemable pile of doggie doo doo either. While usually plodding and horrendously dull, there are times when you get into a groove and really start kicking ass. It isn’t Nirvana or anything, but it’s a good sort of mind-numbingness. That aside, Too Human is average in almost every respect. The novelty of its control scheme and setting might appeal to you, but little else will.

Rating: 2/5