I’ve been spending the past two weeks burning my way through a long list of backlogged games I want to clear before school starts and I lose my NEET badge, including Shadow of the Colossus, Red Dead Redemption, Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 2 and L.A. Noire.

Valkyria Chronicles 3 is one of them. And this time I am actually reviewing it in an almost timely fashion and nowhere close to the release date of the next game. Go me.

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Read the rest of Valkyria Chronicles 3 (1,801 words)

© DarkMirage for Ramblings of DarkMirage, 2011. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: psp, sega, valkyria chronicles, vc, vc3

Hollywood has its flaws. Cookie-cutter scripts and commodification of art can often ruin beautiful things. But at least Hollywood gets the cinematography right and doesn’t usually suffer from the pandemic of awkward overacting rampant in Japanese mainstream cinema. 2011′s Space Battleship Yamato live action movie is anime-comes-alive, but in a bad way that constantly reminds you how stupid the world would be if everyone behaved like manga characters.

Still, it’s not a total disaster.

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© DarkMirage for Ramblings of DarkMirage, 2011. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: meisa kuroki, movie, sci-fi, space, space battleship yamato, takuya kimura

So I have been clocking a few hours into Atlus’ horror puzzler Catherine on my PS3 because Rie Tanaka was tweeting about it and I am easily influenced by Twitter. Surprisingly, it is actually not a bad game, but it takes a lot of patience to overcome the rage-inducing learning curve, and ultimately at the end of the day the puzzle stages are not what people play the game for, or maybe that is just me.

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© DarkMirage for Ramblings of DarkMirage, 2011. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: atlus, catherine, horror, nightmare, ps3, puzzle, sheep

So, I got rid of my 20-dollar Logitech keyboard and bought my self a DK9008 mechanical keyboard from Taiwanese manufacturer Ducky Keyboard. Lame brand name aside, this is probably the best hardware investment I’ve ever made.

If it were possible to marry a keyboard, I…wouldn’t but the DK9008 is still a pretty darn good keyboard.

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© DarkMirage for Ramblings of DarkMirage, 2011. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cherry mx, dk9008, ducky, geek, keyboard, mechanical

With the release date of Valkyria Chronicles 3 for PSP less than two weeks away, I figure this is the perfect time (by my usual standard of procrastination) for me to write up my thoughts on VC2, a game which I had only recently completed.

In my defence, I only got to play the original VC three months ago after finally caving and buying a secondhand PS3. Also, Valkyria Chronicles 2 is the most amazing game ever created for the PSP and everyone with two opposable thumbs should play it.

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Read the rest of Valkyria Chronicles 2 (2,205 words)

© DarkMirage for Ramblings of DarkMirage, 2011. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: psp, sega, valkyria chronicles, vc, vc2

How the mighty has fallen. Once upon a time, Microsoft could sell garbage and people would still buy them because it was the only garbage in town. Now it’s desperately playing catch-up to iOS and Android with its late-to-the-game abysmally-named Windows Phone 7 operating system.

Naysayers are already predicting a Kin-like premature demise for WP7 and that may very well turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. But for this ethereal moment, I am happy with my LG Optimus 7.

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© DarkMirage for Ramblings of DarkMirage, 2010. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: lg, microsoft, mobile phone, optimus 7, windows phone 7, wp7

A long time ago, I stumbled upon the Golden Boy OVA series on Nico Nico Douga and thought it was an odd and unique piece of work. It left a bit of an impression but I didn’t think much more of it. Recently, I had the chance to read the 10-volume manga series that it is based on. It blew my mind in a way that words alone fail to describe.

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© DarkMirage for Ramblings of DarkMirage, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: ecchi, golden boy, mind blown, tatsuya egawa

Like any modern metropolis, Tokyo’s glittering skylines carefully conceal a more sinister side from the casual observations of an outsider. And like most other things Japan, organized crime in the form of yakuza carries with it cultural quirks that are at times indecipherable for those of us who live outside the Galápagos. Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein is a book that sets out to document and interpret a small slice of this enigma, written from a Jewish-American journalist covering crime stories for the Yomiuri Shinbun. The end result is a thought-provoking page-turner.

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© DarkMirage for Ramblings of DarkMirage, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: books, crime, jake adelstein, japan, tokyo vice, yakuza

Highschool of the Dead (HOTD) is a surprising winner once you get pass the campy title reminiscent of last-century B-grade horror movies. Despite a story set-up that is pretty generic in the zombie apocalypse genre, the series manages to mix in enough anime-unique tropes to create an entertaining blend of two vastly different subcultures.

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© DarkMirage for Ramblings of DarkMirage, 2010. | Permalink | 19 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: apocalypse, high school, highschool of the dead, horror, survival, zombies

Kimi no Iru Machi does shounen romance like a cup of fresh milk. It’s frill-free and yet enjoyable. Sure, you could always add chocolate, bananas or space-alien girls to create a more exotic blend, but sometimes it’s nice to just savour that pure unaltered taste of simplicity.

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© DarkMirage for Ramblings of DarkMirage, 2010. | Permalink | 12 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: kimi no iru machi, kouji seo, suzuka