Playstation Vita has killed my ability to think coherently.

For the moment, my mind is pretty much stuck at going "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" and not stopping.  Mostly because of LittleBigPlanet Vita.  (Tentative Title.)  But also mostly because of the Playstation Vita itself.  Two models, as we all knew, Wi-Fi only and 3G/Wi-Fi model, with the 3G one using AT&T as its carrier.  The Press Release makes mention of "pricing" through AT&T, so I'm expecting Data plans, so I'm just going to spring for the Wi-Fi only model unless something comes up to change that.

I'm gonna have to just link you to Chance's recap of the Keynote until I can form more and more proper sentences.  But, yeah, I am pretty much super excited at the moment.

Edit:  Alright.  I'm more composed now.  Did anyone notice that I spelled 'coherently' wrong in the initial posting?  Boy, that's a bit embarrassing.   Anyways...

After what I initially referred to as "cockteasing" by Kaz Hirai, who insisted on bringing up the Vita, subtly, talking about the PSP, referring again, vaguely, to the Vita and then bringing up Playstation Suite, the NGP, then announced, finally and officially as the Playstation Vita.  After bringing it up and doing the usual talking on it's high points, I, as I'm sure everyone watching, was just chomping at the bit to know a price.  And when one wasn't provided by the time he was already handing it off to someone else to talk about the games, I'm sure more than a few people felt a creeping dread.  Knowing Sony, this was their ploy to raise excitement and then crush it finally and completely with some insane pricepoint at the very end of it.  It wouldn't be the first time and, unfortunately,  it likely wouldn't be the last.

But rather than some evil ploy to smash dreams and bring ridicule upon themselves, the entire section of the presser was perfectly engineered to bring about the highest amount of excitement one could get from it.  "Here's what it can do.  Here's what the games look and play like.  Here's some of the cross-console possibilities."  Essentially, "Here's all the shit it can do that makes you think we're not going to compete with Nintendo on price."

And then, Kaz came back out, and brought the excitement, the interest to its apex...to then bring down waves of gratification as they did what no one expected, truly expected them to do:  Priced the base model exactly at the price-point of its direct competitor, the 3DS, at $249.99.  Then, less surprisingly, as this point had been mentioned before in the rumors, its partner price of $299.99 for the 3G/Wi-Fi model was announced, with AT&T being tapped as the exclusive provider of 3G for the system.  Still no real word on what all you'll be able to do with 3G on the thing, but a deal with AT&T likely means a data plan, which means a lot of people will likely not shell out for it unless there's something else in it for them.  Still, being that it's got 3G -and- Wi-Fi, so long as you're not supposed to sign up right there in the store and it comes with a little something extra, a memory stick or something, it might not be a bad thing.

So yeah.  With everything we've seen for the Vita so far (Not only E3, but the stuff from waaaay back, when it was first announced, even) and everything we know now, the Vita is looking like a sweet deal.  It's going to be rough for Nintendo to try and convince everyone that you're getting the same amount of bang for your buck; and touting 3D might not be the only way around it.

PSN's On the Way Back

So, the latest firmware for PSN, which will allow you to change your password (And likely that's about all it does) is up now, sorta kinda.  You see, the PSN is being restored incrementally, or mostly as a state-by-state basis, which is being displayed on a map here.  Dunno how often it's going to be updated, nor do I know if that map will cover Canada as well (Sorry Chance!) but I mean, it's on the map, so hopefully it will be!  As of this writing, it's California (which is a given) and the north-east states.

So, what does this mean?  Well, it means we'll get to have online access again!  Not store access just yet, as that's a later phase, and they're first concerned with getting you set up to, y'know, play games online that you've bought rather than selling you games you, in fact, cannot play online with.  (A move many would have accused Sony of doing, assuredly.)  The full-list of services is hopefully going to be back to full capacity by the end of May.  If you go by the list Joystiq gives,

• Sign-in for PlayStation®Network and Qriocity services, including the resetting of passwords
• Restoration of online game-play across PS3 and PSP
• Playback rental video content, if within rental period, of PlayStation Network Video Delivery Service on PS3, PSP and MediaGo
• Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity, for current subscribers, on PS3 and PC
• Access to 3rd party services such as Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and MLB.tv
• 'Friends' category on PS3, including Friends List, Chat Functionality, Trophy Comparison, etc
• PlayStation Home

Pretty much looks like priorities are straight.  I'm not sure where the store fits in, but I would hope it would be directly after online game-play, and not but a couple bullets later.  But hey, we'll see how it works out.  Me?  I'm just happy that in a few days, hopefully, I'll be able to sign in, sync my trophies, and sign out, assured that I'll never have to get Quizmaster again.  Unless I buy the game again on another system in the future.  Which....I'm that hardcore of a fan.  But we'll just have to wait and see!

A More Overt News-Dump

Alright.  I am not in much of a 'thinking' mood at the moment, but there are a few new things kicking around that should at least be mentioned.  And while this has nothing to do with any of it, here is some music to listen to because it is awesome.

This is from Dynasty Warriors 7, as you might or might not realize right off the bat.  It is pretty righteous.  Now, with that, let us begin the news!

1.)  New God of War for 2012 (Rumor).  Well, first off, this would be awesome.  Most definitely, at least in my view because, as we know, God of War is a series that I extremely enjoy.  Really, really not sure where they'd go with a new game unless they took the easy route, which, hell, I would play and enjoy.  (I imagine that route would go the way of the Norse, though.)  I'd hope they wouldn't take the route some developers do when they've written as far as they want to go and go 'back' for a prequel (though it has worked in the past.  Snake Eater, anyone?) since, well, they've done prequels at this point.  And something like an AU deal would likely not be called "God of War 4".

Honestly, if they take the aforementioned easy route and, as I said, go with the Norse mythos, I'd honestly just hope for a whole new series that is either set in the events leading up to Ragnarok, or during Ragnarok.  (Honestly, it would put the developers hiring multiplayer people in a whole new light.  Would you like to be a part of fucking Ragnarok?  Tell me that wouldn't be a draw to people wary of an online foray.)

2.)  EA's Project $10 Plan for Alice 2? A whole game.  I hadn't really put too much stock into this the first time I read about it, but at the time, I just figured it was a PC only thing and didn't really, well, think about it.  But no, apparently it's for all three platforms.  So even though I have American McGee's Alice around here somewhere for PC; I could have it again on a platform more suited to my gaming at the moment.  With trophies!  Well played, EA.  Well played.

I don't have too much stock into the game, as, like I said, I bought it somewhere and played a bit of it, but I've never been a PC gamer so I didn't do much.  When I say I played a bit of it, I mean like maybe ten minutes.  And though there's an LP out there by one of the LPers whom I watch, I haven't really sat down and checked it out.  I guess I'm just not that much of an Alice person.  Perhaps, with time, that'll change.

3.)  Everything is ruined forever. (Or at least until 2012 now.)  The Last Guardian, and the Ico/Shadow of the Colossus Collection have all been pushed back to some unidentified date.  While this isn't -much- of a surprise, it still stings.  A lot.  Although maybe by the time they actually come out, 3D TVs will be a little more approachable in both design and cost and taking full advantage of the 3D capabilities of the games will be something easier to imagine.  That would be nice, especially considering that we don't know if the 'locked at 30 FPS' thing that was confirmed for SotC is -just- for 3D mode or static, regardless.  Might as well get the most out of it if possible, yeah?

4.)  Home gets another update.

Yyyyyep.

5.)  Minecraft gets to Beta 1.5 (.0_1)  I don't do a lot of Minecraft news because, well, I don't have the game, and everytime I admit that, a little piece of me dies because I want it that bad.  But I can't have it, not yet, and possibly not even before it officially releases alongside Skyrim, but at some point, it will be mine.  But mentioning this new patch seems well enough since I've watched quite a few videos on it lately, and it seems rather endowed with content.  Not so much as previous updates, but, well, I'm not the type to care.  Content is content after all.

With the new update, there is now weather, including the return of snow (though not endless snow as it was in the Alpha's 'Winter Worlds' pre-biomes), and bringing along rain and storms with it.  Storms seem rather...well, strange, in that lightning is actually poised to, well, hit things instead of just being there for the effect.  Internet rumors (that I haven't seen confirmed yet) say that lightning striking a Creeper (for the uninitiated, it's a giant walking cactus looking thing that explodes) makes it into a Super Creeper, which increases the blast radius of its explosion.  Striking other things, I imagine, just makes it die and drop whatever it drops.  (The most notable exception being that if a Pig dies by being struck by lightning, the ham that it drops is cooked)

Powered rails are now in as well, which seem to make designing large-scale minetracks easier, since you don't have to worry about setting up rather gigantic and unwieldy stations for boosters.  It also provides a new use for Gold, which, at this point is fairly useless outside of watches.  Detector rails don't seem equally as useful to me, but then again, I don't have the game, so maybe I'm missing something crucial.

And finally, which is probably the most/least important thing of the update, is that the new types of trees (Birch and Pine) now drop, er, Birch and Pine Saplings.  So you can grow more.  Why this didn't happen initially is beyond me, but hey, now it's a thing.

I believe we are all sufficiently informed of things now.

I'm noticing a trend here.

Mondays pretty much suck.  I never have anything to talk about on them, since I've either done a wrap-up on all my gaming on Sunday, or I've been playing only one or two games, so I haven't even written one of those.  News doesn't really come up.  And unless I get a lucky stream of inspiration, I usually haven't written anything.

So that doesn't leave a whole lot for me to make a post about.  And yet I still try.  Because I want to.  Yet, I don't want to fall into more of a 'theme' than I have already.  I mean, basically, I just have Sundays where I will sometimes do a wrap-up, and that's about all I'm comfortable with, since I don't want to come on, go, "Oh, it's Tuesday, I have to write (something specific), so I might as well get on that."  Because I imagine it'll become too mechanical.  And I like having options before me when I sit down to write.

Which...is precisely the problem for Mondays, since those options are rarely there.  Still, I imagine I can find something for Mondays, since, well, I have for about four months now.

I was kind of hoping I'd get a response from GameFAQs guy by now, but no such luck.  And I am still a bit scatter-brained from running against the brick wall that was what I did yesterday.  Repeatedly.  So I can put some of the blame on that.  But it's just been like the last few Mondays, I sit and think and my brain just shrugs and goes, "Eh, what do you want from me?"

I'm on a self-imposed black-out for inFamous 2 and Uncharted 3 which both had news come out today for them, as you might have noticed, so I can't really report on that.  But hey, I can supply you at least, in case you're up for that.  And I've pretty much put in all my cents about the Nintendo console whose controller may or may not be a cat with an interactive touch screen for a face, so there's not much of that well I can tap.

And that's about the biggest things going on today, news-wise.  At least, insomuch as I'd be interested.  Then again, Portal 2 has a bit of news for people interested in that.  I'm sure that'll be interesting for most people!

But, yeah, that's about it for me.  Actual content coming tomorrow.

(This post was brought to you by Stealth-Content.)

Well, this certainly didn't take long.

Really, I figured it would have been a couple weeks before this thing came up, but here it is, right on the very same day, and there's already enough complaints about the 3DS to bring about a formal statement.  Or, rather, the 3D of it giving them headaches.  The machine, as far as I know, is just fine.  I'd never really even thought about it, but I guess this is a real thing, happening to real people.  And big enough of a deal that there's actually parental controls in place that you should set up if you're giving the handheld to someone younger than 6.  (Protip:  Don't do that, regardless.)

I guess they just don't want this to happen.

Quick Note - Getting in the Swing of Things

So, I'm getting back into everything now that I've got everything more or less back to normal.  Everything that isn't basic sentence structure, apparently.  The main problem with getting my schedule all messed up, it seems, is that even though I still get ideas on what to write about, I lost that outlet and, as such, everything I was considering.  Aside from the "What Went Wrong" article I posted, and another of the series that I still have to watch a movie for to be able to write it, my mind is kind of a clean slate.  As in, I can't write anything if there's nothing going on.

This is a problem, of course!  I figured tonight, I can air out a few things at least to help get me back to where I was before, mindset wise, and then it'll get easy again.  So what's on the agenda?  Well, a few things.

Thanks to the generosity of a bro, I've been playing some Dynasty Warriors:  Strikeforce, and even though it hasn't clicked with me just yet, I am enjoying it.  I think the key will leave me saying, "How I learned to stop worrying and start loving the triangle button", since it seems to be the combo chainer button.  Your normal attacks go, but don't carry the Renbu system as it was in Dynasty Warriors 6, which I actually consider a detriment, but Triangle carries more use, not only in charge attacks (though they're unchanged from DW6) but in dash attacks that really serve as a good bridge between slamming down on square.  I still have to experiment, as it's not DW6 and it's not DW: Gundam, but I imagine I can learn to love it.

It's not quite what I expected; I didn't really think they would try to tell the same story of the RotK period, except everyone just came off the set of Dragon Ball Z, but that seems to be the game plan.  I finished off the Yellow Turban Rebellion earlier, and went right into the Anti-Dong Zhou Coalition.  (For the uninformed, don't worry, I intend on doing a series covering the Romance of the Three Kingdoms; it just takes a while to put together, I'm sure you can imagine.)  So it seems like standard procedure, but the inclusion of all the wacky other stuff will assuredly breathe a little more life into the whole story.

As I touched on a few times, I've finally conquered one of my gaming White Whales:  Star Ocean 2.  In a sense, I mean.  I only beat the game, but I've also only scratched the surface.  All the items uncrafted, all the bonus bosses unchallenged, all the Private Actions undone, and a whole other story mode remain for me to attempt at any time.  So I guess it's not unreasonable to state that there's still things I can do with the game, but I have seen the ending, er, one ending, and I've beat the easy form of the final boss, so it counts.  It honestly wasn't that difficult, either; the hardest part was getting through the double boss before the penultimate boss.  And while the last boss gave me some difficulty, it was nothing that a quick leveling session couldn't solve.

There's not a lot I can say about the NGP, when it comes down to it, really.  I want it.  I want it badly.  But it's quite far off, and there's so much we don't know about it.  But suffice to say, I will have it, regardless of anything, because it already promises things that I know it can deliver on, things that I want, and it will be glorious.

Music! Impromptu Dance Edition

Music is kind of a hard thing for me to write about, honestly, as I used to be a music snob in my teenage years (but then again, who wasn't a snob of something back then) and I would only like something if it had a meaning going for it or this or that.  And it also had to be high-energy; I'm not a fan of slow songs on the whole.  I've made exceptions here and there, but the long and short of it is when I listen to music, I want to be entertained.  I've evolved, luckily, in that I'm more willing to try and listen to new things, musically, without being pointed to them by someone else.  Almost completely counter to this point, the songs I'll be showing off were pointed out to me by someone in some fashion (Either the song directly, or a song by the same band and I moved on to listen to more things), but, uh, I guess you can take my word that I'm getting better.

Anyways, I've already shown off one of their songs, but I branched out a bit with 80kidz and, in fact, the song inspired this post, rather than the other I had in mind.  The song is called Fait la Danse and is rather neat!

(Small window because it's static.)

There's a real groove to it, and it manages to get really energetic at times without ruining the flow.  I half-expect it, or rather a snippet of it, to be used as like an introduction theme for a character in some sort of stylish movie.

Moving on, a friend of mine has gotten rather interested in Dubstep remixes of things and sent me off in the direction of them.  I'm not really into all of the classifications; good and not-so-good are all the tags I need, really.  But I did manage to find something by the same remixer that I quite like.  So next up is the Skrillex remix of Lady Gaga's Alejandro.  Yes, yes, Lady Gaga and all the stigma that goes along with that.  I'm allowed to like her songs and not care one bit about the artist.

(Once again, static image)

It's an interesting take on the song and manages to make it a little, well, dancier than the original, which might be the point.  One thing that's pretty embarrassing/hilarious about me is that I actually know very very little about music, which makes it all the worse that I used to think I was smart enough to decide what was worth it or not.  Again, no judgments from me anymore!  (Outside of a few cases, which I won't go into here.)  Once again, I get to simply say that I like what I like, and don't like what I don't like.

The last song is one that wasn't introduced to me as recent as the other two, but it's not been that long ago that I listened to it first.  Sometimes it takes me a little while to really branch out, and for MSTRKRFT, it took a bit longer than I like to admit, considering I've moved from one song to about three or four.  But hey, when I like something, I tend to listen to it a lot before moving on.  This is one of the songs I branched out to, and I find it's pretty good for pretty much any listening occasion.  It's called 1000 Cigarettes.

(This one isn't static, per se, but it's a static image that the 'camera' moves and focuses about on; nothing too interesting.  It's static now that I had to switch it out with a new one.)

Apparently, MSTRKRFT gets a lot of mention in the same groups as Daft Punk and Justice, so, being a real big Daft Punk fan, this means I'll likely need to listen to some Justice things eventually as well.  As well as more MSTRKRFT.  We'll see!

LittleBigThings - Bad News First

Oh noooooooo

So, as Joystiq's reported, plenty of people are suffering from an infinite loading glitch when playing online with pals.  I was hit by this earlier today, as was Kaseius, whom I was trying to play alongside.  It's a real shame, as aside from that, the netcode seemed more improved from the first game, honestly.  Hopefully they'll get that sorted out quickly, as they are aware of the problem and have a fix in the works, apparently.  The article states that a quick fix is to turn off your controller, wait for the level to load (it should, apparently, once the controller is off or shortly after) and then turn it back on and resume.

You can't stay mad at that face.

Happily, there is good news, though.  Plenty of it, in fact.  Not only, as I said, has the netcode improved from the last game, just about everything has improved over the last game.  The visuals are more striking, the characters are more defined, the levels are just that much more entertaining, and the tools, my word, the tools.  Short of some little issues with the Grappling Hook, which is a learning experience, rather than poor implementation, everything works just so well and feels so good and easy to pick up.  The problem with the Hook being that the whole of its controls are hogged onto the left-stick; you go up or down with up and down, left and right accordingly, which doesn't sound all that bad, honestly, but when mention comes up of having the shorten/lengthen inputs being changed, it's hard to not find yourself going, "Well, yeah that might work better, now that you say it."  

The past has shown us that this is just the very very beginning of LittleBigPlanet 2, no doubt MM is already hard at work with supplements to keep us all happy for a while to come.  And with what they've undoubtedly learned with the previous two games (LBP and LBPPSP), the sky is the limit on what to expect.  (Except anything from Squeenix.)

As for my personal experiences in LBP2, I've already completed the story mode, which wasn't too hard to do.  The difficulty is spot-on, so long as you're able to think things out for a moment.  Times when you contemplate going back through the level you've just finished, or that you're having difficulty with, to ace it, you may think to yourself, "Why, that's never going to happen", and then perhaps a minute later or so after thinking more, you just realize all the errors you made, and it becomes that much easier and possible.  I know that's how it happened with me at least; the last boss in the game is particularly punishing until you stop for a moment to recognize all his patterns.  (No pun intended, given the context of the game)

Do you know what's going on here?  Right, neither do I.

I'm not quite sure how far I'll get into the Create Mode.  I know I'll spend all the time in the world in it, but whether anything of worth is produced from it is the part that I'm just not convinced on.  The tools are spectacular, and perhaps it's just experience talking, but they seem a bit easier to use.  On the other hand, there's just so many, and the mere thought of me possibly understanding microchips (it's 99% intimidation, don't worry) is daunting at the very least.

That's me (In a Bomberman costume) swinging on the falling lights in my level, Journey's Fall.

If, or rather, when I do have a project in mind, I'll likely use this as an outlet to express my ideas and intents; hopefully putting it all down somewhere will help the process along a bit.  I did have quite a few levels started in the original, after all, they just simply never saw anything resembling completion.  Aside from Journey's Fall, that is.  And while I'm proud of Journey's Fall, as it was the only level that I made and published and it wasn't complete crap, quality it was not.  It was short, I didn't know much with the tools (Not that I'm some guru now, mind) so there's a lot of embarrassing little things strewn about, and the 'cool' thing of it at the end (A Jetbike) still ends up killing sackpeople about 50% of the time.  While I've begun tweaking it a bit, or at least I had, back in LBP1, I'm not sure I'm happy with putting it back out there with anything short of a full-on remake, though, which will almost be as difficult a task as any.  But it's always been an idea in my head, as has the sequel level to it.  (In fact, I had the framework of the sequel built up before I lost it, but it was not that bad of a loss)

Few games have the ability to make and keep me as excited as the LittleBigPlanet games do (note the present tense), which is why I'm happy to say that it's here to stay, on this blog and in my PS3.  My poor, poor backlog.

Quick Note - Tired

Bleugh.  I really didn't want to not post tonight, but there's no way I'll be able to actually post anything cohesive unless this magical blue potion called Mountain Dew: Voltage wakes me up some.  So there might be a proper post still, but don't be surprised if there's not.

But at the very least, I offer something of content:  Music.

(Small box since it's a static image)

I'd say I know I've heard this before, but, well, I know I have, but not in the way I mean.  Or...something.  I know I heard it in one of Kaseius' vids (Not spoiling which one, it adds to the surprise/enjoyment), but I mean, like, before that.  Can't for the life of me remember where, though.

I will also mention that Phantasy Star Portable 2 has developed a fondness for punching me in the dick repeatedly and I'm not too pleased with that.  Stupid bosses with their stupid-strong attacks.  You know who you are.

Going to get LittleBigPlanet 2 tomorrow barring any unfortunate GameStop Pre-order shortages that might result in an unfortunate purging with fire.

That's about it; I've got two proper posts (Should I start calling them articles?  I mean, I know this isn't like.....an article thing, but "proper post" sounds weird.) in mind and will likely be putting them up in the next two days.  I imagine they will be enjoyable!  (Both of them kicking off new sections or what-have-you as well.)