Category Archives: review

Dead or Alive Ultimate

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I’ve been quietly playing “Dead or Alive Ultimate” for the past two weeks. I am new to the DOA-series, the last (and first) 3D-fighter I played was Soul Calibur 2.
There are (essentially) only three buttons: kick, punch and “hold / counter”. All the other buttons are shortcuts to combinations thereof. Guarding seems to be done by the classic SF2 method of holding the direction away from the opponent. The graphics are quite nice but I still don’t quite understand why for example the arms are separate objects and not properly skinned onto the main body. This is usually well-hidden by clothing, but still a bit annoying. Most likely this is not a technical limitation but due to the difficulty in setting up the bones for such an object. Also, there is quite often some slow-down (which may be due to me playing wide-screen mode (PAL) where more scenery is visible) — usually once for 1-2secs every 3-5 rounds — something like this has no place in a fighting game with carefully controlled environments and should definitely have been eliminated before release.
I have finally unlocked all the costumes yesterday (via the survival / collection method). The only difficult bit was getting the medal for winning 50 fights in a row. In the end, I managed to get 59 wins in the Tag-mode with Zack and Jann Lee with the health bar set to “Largest”, mostly playing Zack and using Jann as my backup for when I was in a tight spot. 😀
I still haven’t quite gotten the hang of countering, but at least I can block now. And it has made me want to play Soul Calibur 2 again, which is not online but I have not taken advantage of that in DOAU yet (except for uploading my scores for survival where I am somwhere in the 1750s). It’s not the best fighter ever (and no-one except Itagaki claimed it to be), but then it’s not crap either. Looks like the media-average of (currently) 83% is spot-on. 😉

Beyond the Clouds

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“Beyond the Clouds” is Shinkai Makoto’s new work, after Voices of a Distant Star. In contrast to “Voices” (which was about 25 min), “Clouds” is a full featured movie running for about 90 minutes. And as expected when one works with such a small staff, the project took a lot longer than originally estimated, but then it was only supposed to run for about 50mins.
In any case, the artwork is still highly recognisable (e.g. the “blush lines” across the characters’ cheeks) with its lush colours and an excellent use of contrast / bloom. The backgrounds are jawdropping and the CG is integrated much better than before (i.e. you hardly notice it). Similarly, the story also deals with the same (romanticised and melodramatic) themes as its predecessor — seperation and love, but it also adds a third person to the mix.
I quite like the idea of the story; it has some interesting “hard” science fiction ideas in it as well as reflecting more or less current political events — all set in a parallel universe that diverges from our own somewhere in the 1970s.
All in all, it has obvious similarities to “Hoshi no Koe”, but that cannot be a bad thing. It is very easy to forget that this project was undertaken by comparatively few people led by Makoto, which makes it all the more impressive. Very much looking forward to the R1 DVD.
As an aside, how does one play the violin with the bowstring upside down? 😉

Million Dollar Baby

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I am a bit at a loss for words. Do not watch this if you think you’re getting a “boxing movie”. It’s not. It’s a drama. A very good one at that.
One thing I particularly liked about this film is that it dares to be silent, passages without dialogue. And if I age half as gracefully as Clint Eastwood, I’ll open a bottle…
Anyway, watch it. Very recommended.

Saw

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Saw is a psycho-thriller in the vein of “Se7en” or “Silence of the Lambs”. It is able to stand on its own, though. A serial killer who calls himself “Jigsaw” puts people in carefully controlled situations in which they (in theory) have a way to survive; these situations usually have a personal connection to person being tortured. These games get more and more elaborate until there are multiple persons involved, all fighting for their way out of a death trap — at the cost of others.
The film is truly scary and horrific, and the way the plot turns is unpredictable, but not too far-fetched. In retrospect, I am not entirely convinced that the timeline of events holds up to scrutinity, but that thought never has time to come to the surface while actually watching “Saw”. Recommended.

iPod Shuffle

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I also received my 1gb iPod shuffle today (looking at watch: yesterday, actually). It’s tiny (about the volume of my older 256mb USB flash drive, but a bit longer and flatter), works well with iTunes (although reencoding the high-bitrate songs to 128kbit AAC slows it down quite a bit — I’ve turned that feature off in the hope that in a future version the reencoding threshold will be user-configurable) and plays music (full blast is louder than I would ever want to listen to).
And on the first auto-fill — I don’t know whether on purpose or by accident — iTunes selected exactly 240 songs to put on it (which is the exact number Apple quoted). 😀

Dell 2005FPW

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I got my Dell 2005FPW today, a 20″ widescreen flat panel display. This is not a huge step up from my old 18″ Compaq TFT8030 display in height, but it is much wider (having a resolution of 1680×1050). It has a normal VGA input, DVI (which I am using) as well as composite (used too) and S-Video, and last but not least a 4-port USB 2.0 hub.
By default, the display is very bright; I had to halve the brightness to not be blinded by my desktop. The image looks very good (no dead pixels) and is nearly viewpoint-independent (except for blacks which become some sort of dark red-ish brown at extreme (i.e. nigh-on sideways) angles). The response time is also very good (supposedly 16ms) and I can see no ghosting whatsoever.
The composite input is a lot sharper than what the Compaq display offered, but consequently is also a lot noisier, particularly in busy areas. The deinterlacing of the Compaq also seemed a bit better (but that may be due to its excessive softness as well). In a completely darkened room and with a black screen, you can see a bit of backlight bleeding on the Dell (i.e. the black is not completely uniform). This also happened with the Compaq (which had a smaller area to light) and neither is it apparent in normal use (i.e. screen not entirely black) or under brighter lighting conditions. This is on a revision A01, made in the UK in January 2005. There is quite a busy thread on the HardOCP forum where they are being returned left and right, but maybe their problems are more excessive.
All in all a very good purchase, in particular when Dell has one of their rebates on displays (which is the only reason I became interested in it).

BECK (Mongolian Chop Squad) Manga

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After watching and (in spite of the mediocre animation quality) enjoying the Beck anime — it is one of the few I watch as soon as I get them, I tried the manga by Harold Sakuishi. Now I can say that the anime is a very faithful adaption of the manga and that the manga is bloody awesome! It has replaced Yotsubato! as my favourite manga.
In the beginning, it feels a bit “angsty”, but it never loses its humour so that it becomes overwhelming. And when the band finally comes together and plays, the “performance” artwork is excellent and conveys the energy very well. The characters also change, grow and behave believably in their own context. And it had me laughing out loud plenty of times (e.g. Chiba’s “What dream?”).
Highly recommended!