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Hailinel

I wrote this little thing (it's not actually a little thing): http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/hailinel/blog/lightning-returns-wha...

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Character Creator Madness!

I've had Soul Calibur IV in my PS3 for a little over a week now, and my god, the character creation tool in that game is awesome.  Even better is that you never really know what you'll run into when you play online.  Earlier tonight, I fought against Nephenee from Fire Emblem:  Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn.  I was so impressed by the design that I sent my opponent a message after the match (the new in-game XMB is actually pretty useful) to compliment him on it, and we ended up adding each other to our friends lists.  Pretty cool.

The encounter also left me inspired, and I ended up using the character creation tool to create replicas of two other Fire Emblem characters; Titania and Mist.  These characters are joining a growing line-up of character replicas and originals that I'm having a lot of fun just building.  Some of my favorites thus far:

  • Mitsuru Kirijo from Shin Megami Tensei:  Persona 3.
  • Agrias Oaks from Final Fantasy Tactics.
  • Rin Shirosaki from Ouendan 2.
  • Several characters from a story I've been working on.
  • Samson from Cho Aniki.
  • A demonic version of Xianghua (had to go for a full custom version since the ability to edit standard characters is extremely limited.  Also, yes, a demonic Xianghua.  Why not?
  • Hilde dressed in a rather fetching golfer's outfit, complete with her joke weapon, 18th Hole.
  • Cecil from Final Fantasy IV (though I definitely want to go back and tweak him since he was one of my earlier efforts).

There's a lot of potential for more insanity, and the options just keep growing as I unlock more gear.  If I had a digital camera, I'd definitely try sharing some of my creations in visual form.  What sort of madness have you all concocted?
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It's Over ONE THOUSAAAAAAAAAAAND.

I'm sorry.  Hopefully that's the last Dragon Ball Z reference I make in this blog.

I guess that there are a couple of things that one could infer from the speed I managed to accumulate 1,000 points.  One is that I really need to find more things to do with my time, which is actually true, although I can say that I have a full-time job and an active social life.  I just spend a lot of time at the keyboard.

The other, however, is that I'm really digging the structure of Giant Bomb.  Although some might say that it's lame that the users are the ones expected to fill out the majority of the site's encyclopedic content, I'm of the opposite mind.  It's cool that we're able to add what we want and share our collective game knowledge, up to and including absurd trivia that a community like Wikipedia would frown upon.  Of course, there are downsides to all of this, like the potential for edit-wars between users with over 1,000 points each, malicious lies not being caught in a timely fashion.  These are issues that the site staff will have to deal with, and hopefully they'll do a good job of managing it, but for the foreseeable future, I'm willing to give this site a chance.

As for what I'm playing right now, I picked up Final Fantasy IV last week and I'm having a blast with it.  It's an excellent remake that shows the developers thoroughly went through every aspect of the original to make sure that nothing would get lost in the transition.  I'm still less than halfway through the game, but I can safely say that this new version is the definitive version in every aspect, from graphics and presentation to gameplay and difficulty.  This is the way that remakes should be done.

I also picked up the PS3 version of Soul Calibur IV last night, and what little I've played of it so far has already left me in a far greater mood than the disappontment that was SCIII.  Even with the tweaks to the gameplay like the soul crush and instant finishers, the gameplay feels more like Soul Calibur II than III, which is something that I approve.  The character creation tool is much more robust, and the story mode, while not nearly as long as Soul Calibur III, feels tighter.  Even Darth Vader, who is still a pretty odd fit for this game, feels like an okay addition (though I dread the thought of fighting 500 Vader players when I finally take the game online).  For extra comedy value, switch the game to the Japanese language track to listen to Vader's Japanese voice.

Also, you might want to switch the voice track to Japanese just out of general principle.  I like the Japanese voice acting a lot better.

I'm not sure how often I'll update this blog, but I'll definitely try.  As I said, I like the direction this site is going so far, and hopefully I'll stick around.  I mean, on what other site is "borked" considered a categorical concept?

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