Eh....

Sorry for another really slow week. We just bought Dynasty Warriors 6, so I've been rather occupied. But I have been watching anime. I'm watching Beck Mongolian Chop Squad via the Funimation channel, which is fantastic. I've also been finishing up Black Cat (which I canceled on my Netflix after the second disc because it was so boring, but I figured I might as well finish it).
For DVDs, I'm watching Samurai Deeper Kyo, which is really hit or miss. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's just really off.

So there's 3 reviews that will be up and coming soon(ish). Or four, as I'll talk about DW6 at some point as well. We're going camping this weekend though, so that's 3 days of no games, and Fable 2 comes out next week, so that's drop-off-the-face-of-the-earth gaming.

In general news, for the interested:
Konami's Yoshitaka Arai made mention of MGS4 and the Xbox 360 in the same sentence...in a (sort of) positive manner. His comment has since been edited within its accompanying article. I believe it'll see a 360 release eventually; they might as well just climb down off their tower and get on with it.
Some journalist reviewing the new Max Payne movie for the Orlando Sentinel dared to make the comment that "Nobody ever shed a tear over a video-game character's death." Now, the full context is: "Max Payne isn't the worst video-game movie adaptation, not so long as Uwe Boll lives, breathes and directs. The acting's not bad, overall; the shootouts work. But as good as a couple of its action beats are, Max still suffers from the heartlessness that makes games emotionally inferior to movies. Nobody ever shed a tear over a video-game character's death."
Did you catch that? "...that makes games emotionally inferior to movies." If you want to join in the obligatory flaming, you can see the entire article here.
Will Wright finally bought a PS3, thanks to Little Big Planet. That still hasn't convinced ME to buy one. There still isn't a single game I'm interested in playing on the console, and clearly there wasn't one Wright was interested in before LBP. But I'm one of those people who doesn't "get" LBP. Feel free to flame me now too, I guess. :) Sony fanboys is why I won't be going to the midnight Fable 2 launch; I don't want to fight my way through Sackboy freaks to get my freak on with Fable.
If you're a Portal fan, or have been interested in playing but have not taken the dive yet (what's your deal? Get with it!), next week marks the release of Valve's Portal: Still Alive game/expansion. It should have the full Portal game, plus the extra levels, so it's fine if you don't have the original game yet...though it sucks for people who already have it and now have to buy it again. I hope it's released as an expansion, too. Only 360 Portal fans need apply.
Also, the people who put DRM on their games don't even like the DRM they're using, but they're going to use it anyway! Hooray! It's great being a gamer.

Chocolate Underground

It's a really simple, short show so I'm going to do a really simple, short write up. The whole show (which is 13 episodes long) only takes about an hour to get through. Each episode runs roughly 5 minutes. So if you've got an hour to kill, I recommend it, because it's very cute and fun. Watching them individually, the story feels a little choppy as there isn't enough time in a single episode to really cover a lot of ground. Watching them all together should remedy this. It's not the most fantastic show, but it's a decent watch.

In Chocolate Underground, a political faction called the Good For You party has taken over. I'm not sure how they managed to get voted into power to begin with, but it's kind of irrelevant. The Good For You party has outlawed chocolate, and basically anything that isn't strictly health food. They've replaced it with government sanctioned recipes and food items. To hunt down law breakers, they have built giant robotic sensor machines called CACAO. They can detect chocolate (but not its raw ingredients), and they also serve as weapons when needed. The two main characters, Huntley and Smudger, love chocolate and want to bring it back to their home town. They believe that chocolate brings happiness and kindness into the world. With the help of their friends Louise and Blades they form an underground chocolate ring (sort of like underground bars during prohibition in the '20s in the US) and attempt to uncover the secrets of the Good For You party and expose the corrupt government to the world.

Told you it'd be a quick look. I've been working hard on my Fable 2 Pub Games to get all the goodies I can before the game hits next week. But I've also been watching a lot of stuff on the Funimation channels, which I would love to tell you all about once I've seen some more episodes. Also I'm just about through with the summer season, and I'm starting to get episodes together to decide what I'll be watching this fall. A few are a sure thing (Clannad After Story, Skip Beat, Vampire Knight Guilty, Nodame Paris Chapter), but the rest is all up in the air right now until I see some episodes.

Oh, and just for reference, CU is from Production I.G. It's based on a manga by Aiji Yamakawa, which was itself based on a children's novel by Alex Shearer.