Newtype Flash

I'm currently in the process of fleshing out a vampire hunter series and can't decide if I want to limit the series to just vampires and vampire variants or to include other mystical entities.

Werewolves and vampires are a bit cliche at the moment, so I'd like to avoid using lycanthropes altogether.

The undead/zombies wouldn't seem that out of place, though their use may be more suitable for a later stage of the story but I don't think that they should reach pandemic levels.

Ghosts would just be silly.

Black Dogs and similar animal variants could possibly work.

Doppelgangers?

Satyrs maybe, just for a laugh...

Though for the most part I think I should just stick with vampires.

In order to promote their latest event and the game itself, Cryptic Studios decided that for 3 days they'd make the game Free to Play for everyone and this tempted me to take a look at it. Unfortunately for the first day of the freeplay, my internet was capped... Then the second day the client kept on stopping in the middle of downloading. But by the third day I was finaly able to play! The first thing I had to do was create a character.

Now herein lies the problem. I suck at coming up with designs from scratch, it's why I stick to photography and model kits. But the problem is compounded by the fact that when you do find a series of character parts you want, you'll often find out that they're mutually exclusive between the outfit categories. I had a similar problem in City of Heroes/Villains but it just wasn't as bad as it is in Champions Online. The body parts and costume items you can use are really generic most of the time, while sometimes having designs with too many variations, when the designs themselves won't be used that often. Eventually I did manage to get some decent looking characters in the end, but that was only because I started going through the character creation process backwards.

I pretty much picked a powerset I think would be good, picked a gender, skipped the face and body customizing and got straight into costume design. Then when I had the costume ready I would go back and change the body/face to suit and then almost always change the power set to match the character.

When you first enter the game you're treated to a tutorial level that's very similar to CoH/V, but much more compact and fast-paced. No longer do you have to run long distances to talk to some guy or enter a mission instance and pretty much each quest introduces you to a key game mechanic, running the gamut of attacking, blocking, picking up items and rescuing trapped civilians. All culminating with your character helping the main heroes of the story take down the alien mothership. Then your character is briefly thanked by the mayor before you're given the decision to go to either Canada or the Desert.

Both choices pretty much play out the same, a fuck-ton of missions culminating in a boss instance involving one of the major villains. But before you start doing any missions you should visit the powerhouse, your one-stop shop for all your power needs. Because once you're in the real world you have access to travel powers! Now this is a godsend, in CoH/V you had to play for an eternity before you were given minute travel powers. But in CO, you're pretty much given fully-fledged travel powers from the get-go. The travel powers themselves are quite an interesting mix, your usual flavours of flight: Fire, Earth, Hoverdisc, Ice, Jet Boots and Vanilla. As well Super Jump/Rocket Boots and Superspeed. You also had Acrobatics, which was sort of a comination of Super Jump and Super Speed, but even though you couldn't jump as high as Super Jump or run as fast as Super Speed, being able run faster AND jump higher than normal at the same time is much better the individual powers on there own. Also it lets you travel entirely by backflipping.

What CoH/V didn't have and what probably came about as a result of Cryptic's intial work on the Marvel MMO is the Swinging travel power. Though it may be disconcerting when you look up to find your grappling gun is hooked into nothing but air as you swing along, the process of swinging across level is quite enjoyable.

Outside of the Travel powers that game varies deeply depending on which sets of power you're using. My first character, Coup De Grace, used a combination of punching to charge up energy with that energy released in the form of pistols to the face. This worked quite well, but I reckoned that I could take less damage if my energy building power was also a ranged attack. So that led to the webslinging cowboy, Hollow Point and I ended up playing through most of the time as him. If only I had more time to play, I could have leveled up enough to be able to take on the cowboy robots.

With time running out, I decided to take a few more powersets out for a test drive. I created a mecha-type character and decided to tryout the power armour powersets, they didn't go so good. I don't know if it's a bug or just the design, but I just couldn't used them as effectively as I could Gunslinging. I came up with a nice Telekinesis/Telepathy combo that would probably do good if I had more time with the game. I then tried to make an avian character, but my efforts were hampered by the lack of avian parts that aren't wings or feet. Then I decided to make a ripoff of Scarlet Spider and join in on the countless tirade of copyright infringement.

I don't know if it's case outside of the free-to-play weekend, but if you spend a couple of minutes watching the tutorial spawn point you'll see a neverending influx of copyrighted characters and cheap knockoffs. Though while you'll find a fair few of them to actually be really well done considering the creation system, but for every decent-looking Lizard-Man, you'll find a dozen terrible Superdudes and Verde Lanterns...

Overall I enoyed playing CO and would consider picking up the retail version if I had the money, though that's only because Cryptic doesn't allow you to continue playing with just a subscription alone, unlike SOE.

I need Part 3 of the 20th Century Boys Live-Action movie series now!

I've just watched Parts 1 and 2, they were really good, but part 3 won't be out on dvd until early next year!

The way the movies were broken was just as I expected with the first movie ending just before the first time skip and the second ending at the part where Friend is resurrected and the post-apocalyptic time-skip.

Not too much has changed from the Manga even with a few bits of dialogued removed the movies are still quite long, over 2 hours each. Though they did cut the whole thing about Pope visiting Japan and Kanna using her ESP powers at the casino to win a bunch of money to hire the mafia to protect the pope. Also the opening of the first movie is slightly different from the opening of the manga. But other than that it pretty much sticks to the story.

And we'll all say no to the picture phone

I had to get up earlier than usual to make it to the first screening of TF:ROTFLOLBBQ because the cinema had decided to fit as MANY screenings as they can into the day.

The Ads.

I turned up five minutes late so I missed a majority of the ads and pretty much entered when they just had the trailers left. Nothing really memorable, except the G.I. Joe tralier which looked very generic/cheesy action filmy with a dash of crazy, Accelerator Suits?...

The Movie.

The movie started off quite weak and it could have possibly had a bit more exposition for people who hadn't seen the first film ("What the fuck is the Allspark?"). In fact most of the film suffered from massive lacks of exposition and was filled tonnes of panning wide shots of cars (some of them autobots) just driving around... The fans complained about the lack of actual Transformers in the first movie and this had lead to Michael Bay adding them to the point of full saturation. It probably wouldn't have been so bad if they had included an Introdump or 2 to showcase the new characters, but no, you're given no real introduction to the characters (old or new) and towards the end of the film during the climactic fight you have no idea who most of the Decepticons are.

The plot is roughly 80% the same as the first film: Find the MacGuffin before the bad guys can, Prime convincing Sam about his destiny and Sam realizing it at the climax of the film and saving the day using the MacGuffin.

The pacing is a bit odd as well, importants parts of the film move too quickly and the unimportant parts are dragged on for too long.

Another thing: most people would had seen the first film would be confused that bumblebee had lost his voice again and wouldn't know that he lost it again in a comic set between the movies. Also, why the hell did Optimus meet Sam in a cemetery?!

One of the most ironic things about this movie and all it's explosion is that during production they managed to blow up a sizeable chunk of the ILM render farm.

I've also just realized that the film would make absolutely no sense to anybody who had never heard of transformers before.

"FYI man, alright. You could sit at home, and do like absolutely nothing, and your name goes through like 17 computers a day. 1984? Yeah right, man. That's a typo. Orwell is here now. He's livin' large. We have no names, man. No names. We are nameless!" -- Emmanuel "Cereal Killer" Goldstein, Hackers (1995)

( Why can I only write essays when they're NOT assigned to me... )

The end of T3 gave me the impression that John Connor had at the moment became the leader of the resistance, it was somewhat surprising to see that John Connor was only a unit commander in the resistance and the real leader was Michael Ironside (Lead military guy in almost every war film ever). On the big screen you can easily tell the difference between CGI and Live-action, especially at the beginning when the resistance fighters are landing at the satellite dish complex. A bunch of secondary characters die but since you don't know their names and their deaths hold no consequences you don't really care.

The opening introduction text should have really been a narration by Linda Hamilton.

In the aftermath of a "Nuclear" explosion Marcus emerges from somewhere covered head to toe in mud and yelling a lot. He then walks to Hollywood and meets up with Kyle Reese and a miniature Janet Jackson. They rustle up a Jeep Wrangler and head out to the desert where the giant terminator captures a bunch of people and makes things explode and Marcus, Kyle and Janet escape in a MadMaxified Tow Truck but end up getting captured anyway, except for Marcus who got thrown off the transport. Then some A-10s (aka my most favouritist aircraft ever) attack the transport ship and then get shot down (awww). Marcus meets up with his designated love interest the female pilot of the A-10 and then they treck east towards the resistance and fight some rednecks along the way.

They get to the resistance camp which is surrounded by magnetic mines, which of course Marcus sets off and then everyone (including him) finds out that he's a Terminator. Whatsherface breaks him out and then a bunch of shooting that ends in a helicopter being raped by Terminator-Worm things and John Connor being saved by Marcus then John letting Marcus go infiltrate the Skynet base in San Francisco.

John Connor goes solo, capturing a  MotoTerminator and then hacking it by plugging his BlackBerry into it's USB port. Then he rides it off into the sunset.

Marcus walks right into the base unaccosted while John Connor sneaks into the base while twittering almost the entire time. Then Marcus goes into the Skynet main computer area and interfaces with the machine and then uses it's complex database TO LOOKUP NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS! Then after somehow getting his skin healed he discovers that after he signed his body over to Cyberdyne, Helena Bonham Carter's character died but the research continued and eventually Cyberdyne was bought out by the USAF and then you discover that Marcus is the Prototype for the next Terminator series, specifically designed to infiltrate human settlements. As well as the fact that Marcus has succeeded in his mission of bringing John Connor to them.

Cut to John Connor sending off another Tweet before releasing all the prisoners that Skynet was holding except for Kyle Reese who's cell does not open. Enter the naked 80's Arnold terminator who then beats the shit out of John, before somehow everyone ends up in the Terminator factory. The Arnold terminator then fights Marcus for awhile until Arnold does the Five Point Palm Exploding Fist on Marcus and drops him. John then pours a load of molten metal onto Arnold but that only stops him temporarily while John can perform chest compressions on Marcus. Marcus is brought back to life and then a second later John is stabbed through the chest. Marcus defeats Arnold and then brings John to safety and NOONE attempts to stop him despite the fact that he has no skin on his hand. Then the good ending happens and your left wanting a little bit more.

All in all the film could have been a bit grittier. There was hardly any scenes that resembled the future represented in all the previous films. But since they featured T-800's and that model had only just been put online at the end of Salvation it's possibly left open to yet another sequel...

There really wasn't that much salvation in the film either...

This is John Connor concluding your broadcast day.

But I don't know where to start.

First of all which song should I use?

And what the hell is it going to be about?

Though at least one thing I do know is that I have a friend who can possibly convert it into Digital Betacam/Betacam SP for me so I can at least submit it to Rage.

Also I'm going to go see Terminator today, my local cinema has some sort of new digital dolby system that's being unveiled with this movie so that might be interesting.

Also, Also new Icon based on the latest Penny Arcade.

Well there was nothing much going on last night so I managed to knock out two more songs:

Al-Jazari's Ancient Automatons

Pixie and Viking

Al-Jazari I managed to get through quite easy and I'm happy with it. But I'm currently not satisfied with Pixie and Viking, can't quite get the pixie part right or settle on suitable ending/outro to the song. I'll probably redo it at some point.

It's a brand new car song!

Soft Porn and Nazi Sharks

Unlike the previous song I didn't have this one sitting around for a couple of weeks, I in fact made it today. Regarding the title: It's something I heard someone say at a sci-fi convention. The song itself I reckon is one of my best yet and while it's almost all freestyled I do manage to have a proper rhythm throughout.

In March... Looky

And I didn't even realize that the drum logo next to the song on my unearthed artist page meant it had been played on Triple J until today...

Once again, holy crap!

I feel like impaling myself on my guitar...

You know what I'm not going to review this movie until it comes out on Bluray so that way I'll know the proper ending and not have my judgement tarnished by this mulitple ending malarky.

Although in short:

Fuck you for ruining my manchildhood.

Also: While researching for what was going to be the proper review I've come to the conclusion that almost EVERYONE in the Marvel Universe comes either has had an abusive parent or comes from a broken family. Seriously, what the fucks up with that.

I've been playing EVE online a lot lately and when I came across a sound on my Korg DS-10 that sounded remarkably like a mining laser I thought it only natural to incorporate it into a song. So this leads us to:

EP-S Gaussian I Excavation Pulse

Not automatically shipped from clckchmstry.com

Now before we get under way let me make a few things clear:

1) I'm somewhat of a car nut.
B) Im somewhat of a writer
III) Vin Diesel's DnD skills are nowhere to be found.

Also I wrote most of this review a week ago but had it in a buffer, so i've hastily completed it so I can get onto my Wolverine review which involves another chart....

( The Story in which Paul Skywalker saves Vin Solo )

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Back in 2005 or 2006 I was overcome with inspiration and set about writing a martial arts/fantasy epic, Vagabondage. Developed as a comic I managed to get about a dozen or so pages out before procrastination and life commitments threw the whole thing into development hell. Recently I've been trying to get it back up again and redoing the storyboards from scratch. It was during this process that I came to the conclusion that if I do get Vagabondage up and running again I'll draw heavy criticism for having a series that is ripping off Avatar: The Last Airbender because of a lot of similarities between them.

My main character uses an unique form of martial arts to attack using/through air. As well as the party travelling throughout a world filled with many element-themed countries in order to fight the big evil, being chased most of the way.

So now I have to change the main emphasis of the plot to distance myself from Avatar. I never intended to ripoff Avatar at all, heck, I even avoided watching the show itself until last year because of my Law of Fangirlism*. So now I have to make Vagabondage less Asian, which is kinda easy because a majority of the world is a sort of Medieval European setting. Possibly add more graphic violence and either reduce the humour or make it more black.

I don't know, I'll see how things pan out if I can actually get the damn thing up and running again. Failing that I have other ideas which are fairly original.

*Law of Fangirlism: If any series has a major following of Fangirls whom produce an excessive amount of OC's and/or excessive character and pairing worship should be avoided. Especially if the series is Western in nature. Examples: Kingdom Hearts, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Twilight and most things involving Catpeople...

Exceptions that prove the rule: Anything Shonen Jump, Huge casts and major character deaths can somewhat impede the OC/pairing process.

Ah crap... I bet Vagabondage is gonna get fangirls, possibly fanboys (amputee fanboys even). I guess I'll just have to make every character ugly and androgynous!