Ne-Yo Panel At New York Comic Con

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Hey everyone! I want to tell you about my experience with Ne-Yo. I got his autograph and some video from his panel that will be up soon. Ne-Yo, along with his album, is writing a comic book that is called The Libra Scale. This is also the name of the album. Each song represents what is going on the comic. Here is the story. Jerome and two of his friends work together as garbage collectors. They were going their thing when a man appeared with a proposition. He will make all three of them heroes with special powers to save the city. However, they must follow three rules: 1. Protect the city at all cost. 2. Tell no one when, why, where or how you got the powers in the first place. 3. DO NOT FALL IN LOVE. For me I can deal with the first two but the third one is a bit of a stretch. Jerome and the others were a bit skeptical about the last rule too. Although who wouldn't want to have super powers? So they all agreed. This is when the songs come in. I'll give you the story of Beautiful Monster but watch his music videos to figure the rest of the story. Of course Jerome fell in love with a girl named Pretti Sinclair and some of his powers transfered into her witch made her evil. Now Pretti has self- declared herself mayor and is taking over the city. That is the story behind Beautiful Monster. She is beautiful but a evil little vixen at the same time.
For me I love the storyline. I think it's unique in its own right. Tell me what you guys think. Do you think this will be something you can get into while reading or do you think its a waist of his talent and should stick with singing. Well I like it but thats just me. Tell me your thoughts in the comments below. Anime Rules!!!!!!!!!!!!





Michael Jackson: The Experience: Hands On Impression

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Hey my Otakus and Geeks. I know I've been busy with school and other things. A girl's work is never done lol. Anyway I had a blast at Comic Con. I will talk about meeting Ne-Yo, Funimation and the many more later. Today I wanted to talk about the Michael Jackson game coming for the Wii. Jamila from GirlGoneGeekBlog.com and myself went on stage to play the new game. This is a really fun dance game to play.

Gameplay - The game is a dancing game. We were playing the game with the song "Beat It." To play the game you hold the Wii mote and follow the choreography of the song. It works very well and you get to choose who do you follow. You can follow Michael as the lead or the back up dancers. Jamila and I were the back up, but there were times I found it hard to keep up, due to the controls. But the game will be one of the best dance games to come out in this year. The demo had a variety songs to choose from like, "Smooth Criminal" and "Billie Jean." Billie Jean seem to be the easiest to do, and Smooth Criminal seem to be the hardest. The game is going to be huge for those who want to dance like Michael. The presentation is great and each song has Michael as he appeared in the videos to guide you. If you want to be like the glove one, this is going to be the game to get. Our video of Jamila and I playing will be up later. Stay tuned. Mike Rules!!!!

Solanin (Manga Review)

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There is a saying that goes "Sometimes you don't choose the book, the book chooses you." In my case "Solanin" by Inio Asano chose me to take it away from Borders bookstore. I must say that I do not regret buying this book. This has to be one of the best Manga's I've read in a long time. However just because I like it, does that mean you should invest in it?



Synopsis - After graduating from college, Meiko went straight to work as an office lady, but she can't help feeling there should be something more to life. Determined to find a worthier goal, she quits work, but can she actually make her neubulous dreams come true- and how will her sudden decision affect her relationship with her boyfriend Taneda?

Story - This is one of the most realistic Manga's I've ever read. The story is something a lot of college graduates can relate too. The main character Meiko Inoue is out of college and working in a job she hates. Even with her degree she doesn't know what direction she wants to go in her life. Meiko in the beginning starts off as this depressed woman, with a serious distaste for society. She hates everything from her co-workers, her boss and sometimes the love her life is annoying. The only time Meiko finds some type of solace is with a cat she has lunch with at work. But all that changes when Meiko starts to question her life and direction. She quits her job and never looks back. This causes a little tension between her boyfriend Taneda and her. Taneda is a freelance illustrator and he doesn't get paid enough for rent. With Meiko quitting her job, Taneda feels a lot of pressure to see how they will make ends meet. Lucky for them Meiko saved most of the money and is able to survive for a couple of months to a year. During this time Meiko and Taneda try to use this time to find their calling in life.

I won't go into much more detail since this is spoiler free. However Inio Asano has written an amazing Manga. Once you finish reading this Manga you will be questioning your future, and whether the direction you wanted to take was by choice or circumstantial. I think many us in the age range of 21 - 25 have this feeling of insecurity. A feeling of whether we will make it to our dreams and ambitious. The Manga is 426 pages long. I read the book in one day, I couldn't put it down. The characters are all interesting and all have a personal demon to face. My favorite character is Taneda which is Meiko boyfriend. Out of all the characters which I won't say. Taneda to me is the most torture, he relies on girlfriend, his job pays shit and his dreams of being a musician never happen. He's what many in society will call a failure. But what makes Taneda so interesting is he's able to keep going forward. That's what I really like about him, but I'll just say this his strength doesn't last long. Overall this a must read for everyone who wants a realistic Manga, that might hit close to home.

Art - I love the artwork in this Manga. The way Inio Asano does the facial expressions is outstanding. Everything is detail from the environments, to real photo use for buildings to give you a real Japan feel. For a book that's in black and white. I was amazing how great the use of lighting was in this. Their is a great shot of the sun overcasting on Taneda face, to show where the sun will be position had it been seen. The art is amazing. Here is a quick look below.



Final Grade A+ - Solanin is one Manga that will move you once it's finish. It is a very emotional book because it can be anyone of us. Inio Asano has created a world that is surreal and true for you to relate too. It just doesn't give a taste of Japanese life, but a taste of life for the younger generation period. The characters are wonderful and when tragedy strikes it will hit you. You will cheer for them and hope for the best. However in Solanin solace is the name of the game. Final Grade is an A+

Solanin is now a movie check out the trailer below

Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright Trailer

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Okay, you know what Nintendo? Here's my wallet. Just take everything, seriously.
This probably the best thing I've seen all week.


Story Details:
[Professor Hershel Layton and Phoenix Wright (Ryuichi Naruhodo) finding themselves in a different world. They come to the medieval city of Labyrinth City, where reality and illusions are intertwined. This strange town is also home to witches, who hide in the shadows, and is a place where magic is real. It has also been home to a number of impossible occurrences of late.

The city is controlled by a villain named Story Teller. The story he writes with his pen becomes reality as the future of the world.

Layton will find himself faced with all new puzzles. As for Phoenix Wright, the person who seeks his help this time has been accused of witch craft.

The trial that takes place in this world is "Majo Saiban," or "Witch Trial."]

(Copypasta from the description in the youtube link.)

This is probably going to be game of the century. Definitely.


MorphX Review

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While everyone was at the NYCC the last week and playing new games and seeing all sorts of cool things, I was stuck over in Europe and went to the Edelweiss Mountains and did all sorts of hiking. Not so fun when you’re afraid of heights. Guess who’s afraid of heights?

After I returned home, I went to my local game shop and found two things that caught my eye: A fresh copy of Odin Sphere for a mere five dollars, and MorphX, a game that I completely have not heard of going for the pretty reasonable price of $30.

I purchased both games without hesitation and went home later that evening sort of excited to play a game and not knowing what to expect. It wasn’t until much later that I realized that I should have just left with Odin Sphere.

Right of the bat we’re treated by yet another tough, grizzled, and gravelly voiced main character narrating the prologue of the game. From what I was able to gather, the game is set in a grim future where an alien species has invaded and destroyed most of the earth. Apparently the aliens were able to wipe out most of the countries in a single day, but for some reason, just kind of dicked around for about five years in Moscow or something until our “hero” decided to do something. Unfortunately, I’ll never be able to know what exactly our hero was trying to do, because he wakes up in a cave with no memory as to who he is or what he was doing in the cave in the first place. I’ve played through the game and even checked the instruction manual to see if this guy has any sort of identity. Since my super duper research yielded no results, I’m going to refer to the main character as “Morphin’ Mike” from now on.

After a short while, Mike gets rescued by his fellow Russian comrades and almost immediately after that is attacked by his fellow Russian comrades because they think he’s an “infiltrator.” The game uses this word a couple of times but it doesn’t really tell you just what an infiltrator is. Leaving you confused seems to be a running theme with this game or something because I never knew what I was doing or why I was doing it.

The movement controls are kind of janky, and there’s no ability to walk or slow down, so just lightly nudging the analog stick forward sends Mike into a full run in whichever direction you chose. This wouldn’t be that much of a problem if the game didn’t try to put some awful precision plat-forming segments in most levels with the fact that Mike isn’t a very good jumper.

Shooting at enemies tends to flip between rather decent at times to just horrible for a few reasons. The aiming reticule has a tendency to auto lock onto the closest enemy. It’s not a weak auto-lock like most shooters have either; the thing practically sticks right onto an enemy so even if you try to aim a bit to the right, the reticule will just snap right back to the enemy. It later becomes really annoying when you have to aim around enemies or when there are a large number of them on screen and Morphin’ Mike insists on shooting the monster that is the least threatening to you. There are a few sections where the game requires you to hop on a mounted gun and shoot down a large amount of enemies. These are by far the least challenging parts of the game. No joke, you can complete most of these parts by just aiming down the middle of the screen and firing nonstop thanks to the ridiculously powerful auto-lock system.

Melee combat is another matter entirely. It doesn’t require any real skill; you can just run right up to an enemy and just mash on the attack button a whole bunch to get the job done. Nothing in this game flinches though, so even when you’re wailing on them with a lead pipe they’ll still be shooting/stabbing you the whole time, though it’s no big deal though since enemies get progressively easier to take out as you get stronger.

The game doesn’t give you a nice selection of weapons really either, or any selection of weapons rather. During the time I spent with the game, I only found maybe four different types of melee weapons, and two different guns. But it doesn’t make a big difference really since they mostly have the same properties.

It makes even less of a difference when roughly two hours into the game, Mike… morphs… and permanently gets a blade grafted to his arm making me wonder why I spent my time looking for these weapons. And later, you have no need for guns because Morphin’ Mike does his thing again and gets an arm cannon and plasma grenades. Neither of which ever run out of ammo.

This makes me really confused, because even after you finish upgrading and have no need for ammo or weapons, the game still leaves tons of ammo crates and weapons lying around for you to not ever pick up.

This makes the difficulty another thing worth mentioning if this game.

The game gets progressively easier as you go on, but it’s not necessarily from skill. Mike gets stronger as he morphs and the monsters you fight don’t really change a whole lot in their power level. Running low on health was never an issue for me it would always regenerate outside of combat, and there are even health “biomasses” scattered around stages in case you ever needed some serious healing. They’re kind of like Half Life’s own health stations, except to use them you have to pause the game to go to a menu where you can decide how much health you want to take. The biomasses also can regenerate health so you can keep returning to them to get health back as many times as you want. And if the limitless supplies of health weren’t enough, whenever you kill an alien you can absorb them and get health back also.

Mike acquires his abilities by absorbing defeated enemies. There’s a fair amount of alien abilities to use, though the usefulness of these powers range from annoyingly helpful to completely worthless. The first ability you get (and probably the most “useful” of the bunch) is Alien Vision. It basically lets you see in the dark and find secrets. You pretty much always have to have this activated all the time because level environments are incredibly dark. It’s worse in later stages when nearly everything in a level is the exact same color.

Early on it’s really annoying to use because it drains so much of your energy just to have it activated for five seconds. Though in an interesting design choice, after Mike morphs for the final time, nearly all of your abilities no longer require any energy to use. Making the Alien Vision a whole lot like Arkham Asylum’s Detective Mode, only less cool, green, and more painful to look at.

Seriously, I’m willing to bet money that I spent probably 85% of my time playing this game with this activated.

The other power-ups aren’t nearly as valuable as Alien Vision. Rage mode slows things to a crawl and forces you to only melee attack your foes. The catch is that when you land a successful attack in Rage mode, you get a nice chunk of health back. Using Rage mode pretty much eats up your energy bar completely though, so it serves no real purpose until later in the game when enemies start doing a bit more damage.

There’s also an energy shield you can get and some kind of mind control thing but I seriously never used them when I played the game outside of situations where the game forced me to use them.

You can upgrade these by using this pipe works type of connection thing using any of the genes you’ve collected from other biomasses. It’s a bit like that mini-game that you see every once in a while where you have those pipes and they’re all jumbled and you have to connect them in a way so some fluid can safely pass through them? Yeah, it’s kind of like that but less engaging, but honestly, this is the most fun part of the game.

Kind of like Bioshock's hacking minigame, but not as cool.

To actually upgrade an ability you have to connect these red and green globules together. To connect them you have to use any of the genes you’ve found while running through the stages. For each ability, the map layout is different, and I sort of looked at it as a fun little test to find the most efficient way to connect them using what little materials I had. I also had a slight addiction to finding genes hidden in levels so I could go back to the mini-game and upgrade by skills. The fun pretty much stopped there though.

Level layout is pretty bad. I’ve found myself running into identical hallways way too often. For some reason near the end of the game, the creators decided to throw some puzzles at you. They’re built exactly like the pipe works thing you use to upgrade your powers. They aren’t terribly difficult either, just big wastes of time. It’s like someone realized that the game was going to be too short so they just threw in a bunch of these stupid puzzles as filler.

Enemies also have this really annoying habit of spawning directly behind you, attacking you and then running away really fast forcing you to chase them down before killing them making it a hassle to just advance in the stage.

It sounds like I’m bashing this game, but actually the game is more boring than anything else. It seems like a game with decent enough ideas that didn’t exactly work out well when put to use. Though there are dozens of other games that fit that same description, what makes MorphX so special?


Well, nothing really.

4.0/10

Kirby's Epic Yarn Review

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Kirby fans have been waiting for a Kirby game since the Wii started. So far we have seen Zelda, Mario and Super Smash Brothers. However fans were wondering when they favorite round pink friend, will return to his own game. Well finally Kirby is back in a new adventure. However is this the Kirby game you were looking for? Or should you give this yarn to the cats?

Story - While in Dreamland, Kirby always thinking with his stomach spots a different looking tomato. He tries to the eat it and turns out to be the Metamato. The Metamato belongs to a evil wizard by the name of Yin Yarn. Yin Yarn angered by Kirby's actions sends him the magical world "Patch Land." Patch Land is a place where everything is made up of yarn. In Patch Land Kirby rescues Prince Fluff. Fluff tells Kirby that Yin Yang has split patches that make Patch Land whole. They will have to find golden threads to make it whole again.

Gameplay - The gameplay is very simple and easy to do. Players will hold the Wii Mote sideways and use the D-pad,1 and 2 buttons to operate Kirby. Unlike other Kirby games, Kirby will not have the power to suck in his enemies, and take their powers. This time around Kirby uses a yarn whip that's like an extension of his body, to take down enemies. Depending on the level Kirby will also be able to use vehicles and other transformations. Some transformations include a Giant Rocket, UFO, Train, Surfboard and many others. There also some mini games and items to collect. Throughout the game Kirby will find items to secret stages, and items to help him build a apartment that he is staying in. The levels are very easy and that's the main problem I have. Kirby can't die in this game. I tried to die many times and an angel just comes and saves Kirby. Even though this game is catered to the younger audience. They should at least be able to know what it's like to lose. However the level designs are great, fun and addictive. It's just way too easy to play. You can also bring a friend along to play Prince Fluff and help you with the adventure. However since nobody can't die in the game their is no worries about losing. In multi-player you can operate transformations together and carry each other to reach hard places. However there is no online play for this game. The boss battles are very simple and easy, all you have to do is figure out their pattern.

Gameplay Videos


Graphics - Who would've thought that a game with yarn will look this good. Kirby's Epic Yarn design is wonderful. The graphics and levels are so artistically done so well, it's one of the best on the Wii. Everything from Kirby to the enemies all have their unique look. I really enjoyed the grass land level and how some of the background looks like a quilt.

Sound - The music is really beautiful to listen too. It's classical music through out the game. The music is soft and mellow and might put some to sleep, who are not use to that classical music sound. However the only song I didn't like was the desert level. I feel that every game that has the desert level has that same sound.

Replay Value - With tons of stuff to find. Secret levels to play and wanting Kirby to have a good apartment. It offers some replay value, also you have a great multi-player if you want to bring a friend along. However the easy gameplay and not being able to die will turn off some gamers.

Final Grade B+ - Kirby's Epic Yarn is a fun game to play. However it's way too easy even for the kids. The music and graphics are must see experience. The gameplay is solid and has some replay value to it. However the game is a breeze to play through. Kirby's Epic Yarn gets a B+.

New Fist Of The North Star Screenshots & Info

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So I got another email about Fist Of The North Star. Read about it below and check out the new screenshots.

Tecmo Koei is pleased to announce the upcoming demo for its upcoming action brawler, Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage. Delivering a visceral tour of manga-inspired action and mayhem, the Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage demo will be available October 19 on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network.

The demo lets action and manga fans experience a bloody whirlwind of justice in two unique stages filled with enemies, traps and boss encounters. Players will bring the pain as two legendary figures in the Fist universe: the titular hero Ken and his battle companion Rei. Together, these two figures pummel and smash their way through the scorched landscape on a hunt for the menacing Raoh, who plans to rule the world without mercy or justice, feeding off of the word’s dying population.






High School Of The Dead (Anime Impression)

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My friends and other Otakus kept saying to me. "Justin you have to watch High School Of The Dead." Did you see High School Of The Dead yet? Well truthfully I haven't watch it yet, because I'm still finishing Madlax, Ergo Proxy and D.N. Angel. Well I finally decided to watch a few episodes. A few episodes turn into 9 episodes. I must say that this one of the best Anime I've seen in a while. I was blown away to finally see an Anime about zombies. This isn't like a silly zombie anime show, this something I've been waiting to see. A zombie drama show and with "The Walking Dead" just a few weeks away. This show kept my zombie needs feed.

What I Like - So far from the nine episodes I have seen. I'm in love with the drama. I love how this anime is showing the real effects of the zombie apocalypse. Naturally humans are going crazy killing each other. Everyone is trying to survive and make the best of the situation. I really love the characters in this story. Especially Takashi Komuro I'm not going spoil anything. All I have to say is the first two episodes is wow. The animation is beautiful. There are some CGI use but it's done so well you can't really tell. The music I'm so in love with. If anyone knows the insert song at the end of Episode 1, please let me know.

What I Don't Like - The only thing I don't like is the fan service. I mean it's really, really overused in this anime. Like I said in Episode Ten Podcast Show "I Love Boobies." There is no way a woman with huge breast like that can move that fast. But hey it's fiction right. Overall it's a really good show I can't wait to see more.